Torah Thoughts Etc.

Introduction

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"Ezehu ashir?" our Rabbis ask: Who is rich? The answer: "Ha-sa-me-ach b'chelko." He who is happy with his portion.

To the myriad expansions and interpretations of this teaching -- it's broad enough to apply to money, love, success, friendships, etc, -- I take a more targeted approach deriving from the occurrence of the same word in another famous expression, "Vetain chelkeynu b'Toratecha." And give us our portion of Your Torah.

This latter phrase, containing the word "chelek," portion, is puzzling. Why would we be asking G-d for our portion in His Torah? We've already received the Torah. What more could we be asking for here?

An explanation I've heard attributed to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Z'TS'L, much to my liking, is when we ask G-d for our portion of His Torah, we are asking Him to help each of us to find their own unique personal, individual insight into the Torah, with the understanding that each and every Jew has something to add to Torah knowledge through their own original insight -- should they be fortunate enough to find it.

Not everyone gets to go to Yeshiva or study for the rabbinate. Does this mean they have nothing to add to Torah knowledge? On the contrary. Like another famous statement, "Kol Yisroel yes lahem chelek la-olam haba," meaning all Jews have a portion in the World to Come, according to this interpretation, we all have a chelek in Torah reserved especially for us with our unique talents and understanding. We can count ourselves fortunate when we find it. And we can spread Torah knowledge and interest in the Torah by sharing.

My particular slant may seem foreign to "proper" Torah scholars. I have a background in the arts, and I do literary analysis, basically. I do not think the Torah is a literary work of art, chas v'shalom, but it lends itself to the same kinds of hermeneutics (schools of interpretation) that, in the past, I have applied to purely literary works -- and to films.

Our rabbis teach us there is an art and science to interpreting the Torah. There are rules and guidelines and practices well beyond my understanding. Yet with the particular insight I've honed over the years in secular pursuits, I see new light in the Torah all the time.

This, then, is the purpose of this blog. It is a sharing of my chelek of Torah which I have found, and, yes, I am very happy with my portion ...

How The Associated Hebrew Day Schools Let Me Down

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Before we begin at The Beginning, I have moved up a personal piece of mine which I want to make more immediately accessible to readers. I think my experience may well have relevance for today's students in whatever schools they are in, so I've put it at the beginning of my blog to make it easy to find.

I have decided to vent a little as to how I feel the educational system at the Associated Hebrew Day Schools of Toronto let me down in such a way as to abandon me to a life of economic and personal failure, and the distress that goes along with that. Strong words, no? Well, read this story. I've been putting off writing it for quite some time, but ... File this under the "Etc" of the overall title of this blog. As American philospher George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Here, therefore, is a contribution to the collective memory so that at some distant time when there is the risk of this happening to someone else, perhaps, now, it won't.

Scene I

Here is a tale of two men who we find, one winter night, in the Emergency Department of a major hospital in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). One is a patient, sent to hospital by his family physician to get intravenous antibiotics for a pesky cellulitis infection which, if left unchecked, could kill him. The other, the doctor in charge of the Emerg that night.

As the doctor comes in to see the patient, both of their faces light up in mutual recognition. They had both attended the same campus of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. At times, they had even been in the same class.

"How are you?" they ask each other, shaking hands, each pleasantly surprised to see a friendly face. Some routine catching up ensues. Finally, the doctor asks the patient, "I can't remember; did you graduate from CHAT (Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, the High School of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools of Toronto)?"

"Nope," says the patient. "I had to drop out."

"That's too bad," replies the doctor. "What have you been doing all these years?"

"I've been a file clerk for the past twenty-five years," the patient answers, with a tinge of resignation in his voice. "Many of our former classmates seem to have done well, though. You're a doctor, as are many of the others, some are lawyers, some are professors, some are successful writers. It was a good class."

"Yes, it was" agreed the doctor [Note: I know I just changed tense here. It works for me.] "It's too bad you didn't graduate."

"Well," said the patient, "I had no choice. I was always a dreamy kid who had trouble focusing, all through school. Early on, I was able to get by but it caught up with me in Grades 8, 9, and 10. I started floundering academically."

"In my final year at the Associated, Grade 10," he went on, "I got 38% in my first term Science course, which was Botany, a subject I just could not get my head around. To add insult to injury, my mark was read out to the class, to a chorus of whistles and cat-calls. That term, I also got 48% in Geography."

"I was lucky to escape the year with a 63% average," said the patient. "There was no way I could stay. The writing was on the wall. I would have flunked the next year, so I bailed, and went to a public High School where, with the lighter course load, i.e. no Hebrew curriculum, I did better. It was just easier. A lot of kids like me had to drop out of the Associated."

"I know," said the doctor. "I was almost one of them myself. In Grade 11, I was flunking out. My poorest subject was English."

This caught the interest of the patient, who, to that point, had endured a lifetime of low status, low paying employment. How did one become a successful doctor, starting from the same bad school situation?

"I had help," said the doctor. "A teacher took me aside, and worked with me until I managed to turn things around. Actually, I ended up as valedictorian for English studies!"

End of scene.

I don't think I need to explain that, in the above scene, which actually happened, I was the patient. Now let's read "the rest of the story ..."

Having fled the Associated in total confusion, self-hatred, self-doubt, and disarray, I arrived for my first guidance counselling session at Downsview Secondary School, my new academic home for the next three years. Downsview was a good school; also, my neighbourhood friends went there. Of course, though, I was nervous.

"Welcome," said Mr. Vanstone, a pleasant, sincere man who also taught Geography (uh-oh). After we both settled in, Mr. Vanstone asked the question he must have asked a thousand times during his career at Downsview. "Well, Gord, what would you like to be?"

It's hard to describe the state of my mind at the time. Let's just say I was so crushed by my failure at the Associated, and so apprehensive of repeating it at Downsview, that I literally did not think I could be anything. Surely, Mr. Vanstone knew this. Why was he asking? Just to make sure, I explained it to him.

"Well, I don't know," I said. "Last year, at my previous school, I got 38% in Science, and 48% in Geography in the first term, and I just managed to scrape by with a 63% overall average for the year."

"I know," said Mr. Vanstone, "but I think you can be anything you want to be."

"Excuse me?," I said, despairing of his ever understanding me.

"Well, Gord," he said. "We have IQ test results for you which show you can do just about anything you want (in fact they all would have qualified me for Mensa, the Grade 11 result being the minimum age required -- not that that means all that much, after all, since Mensa comprises the top two per cent IQ, which is two out of every hundred, and there are a lot of groups of a hundred in the population. Mensa is not such an exclusive club, and I was/am certainly no Einstein -- but then again, Einstein was no Gord Lindsay!).

In my confused emotional state, I asked "Which tests?"

"Well," replied Mr. Vanstone calmly, "we have the test you took here, earlier in the year, and there are two tests from your former school, the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. You actually scored a little higher on those than on the one you took here. They're all high results, though, and I'm wondering if you'd like to join an extracurricular group of gifted students."

Despair and exhilaration fought each other to a tense standoff inside of me.

On the one hand, not having been privy to my I.Q. scores before, it was quite a happy shock for me to hear I was bright; on the other hand, why didn't I feel it? Why didn't I know it? Did I know it, deep down? Or did I merely suspect it, without daring to believe it? Hey, not only was I confused, I was an adolescent.

"No," my self-doubt won the day. "I wouldn't feel comfortable in a group of gifted students. I'd feel like a fake."

End of scene -- and a singular opportunity.

I shouldn't have to point out -- though I will -- that the dissonance I was feeling inside of me mirrored the peculiar paradox of my IQ versus my grades which went on at the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. Did they not see this discrepancy? Were they perhaps too understaffed to actually read the IQ test results? Were they as screwed up and confused as I was? It certainly seemed that way.

The lack of intervention at the Associated baffled me, and contributed to my suspicion that maybe the IQ test results had gotten mixed up -- no, the Downsview test result was similar -- but hearing that I had a high IQ actually contributed to my confusion. Why had the Associated not told me? Why, at a time when an adolescent is in the tender stages of forming a self-image that will last him the rest of his life, were there no encouraging words? All I knew, throughout this formative time, was that I was a 38 and 48 percenter. No one told me differently, certainly not at the Associated, and that stigma went deep into my soul, notwithstanding that also deep down, I must have known I was bright. Way to help a guy who's having trouble, to overcome his problems, and to believe in himself -- not.

The Associated's indifference, letting a young student who they knew had a lot of potential simply lie, hopeless and afraid, face down on the floor without ever offering him (me) a hand up continued to puzzle me for years.

And, as stated above in Scene I, I was not alone. "Sink or swim" was the apparent policy of the school at the time. One can only hope the current leadership has a different outlook but when I was there, hundreds of students fell off the truck of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools educational program.

Many fell off that truck because the Big Lie ruled in those days, a lie which, in my opinion, the school used to exempt itself from fulfilling its fiduciary responsibility to educate which, in the pure sense of the term, means "to lead [someone] out."

Here's how it worked. "Johnny's not doing well here at the Associated because of the double course load of English studies and Hebrew studies," a teacher would say. "He'll do better at a public school where the course load is lighter."

And, to make what I call the Big Lie seem like the truth, many of the Johnnies, myself included, actually did get better grades in the public school system.

Why, then, do I call it The Big Lie?

Think back to Scene I above. There were two people in that Emergency Room. Both had gotten decent grades in their respective High Schools. Both had decent -- or high -- IQs. How is it one went on to become a doctor, marry, raise a family, and live a good life while the other one languished in the $20K salary range all his working life, never married ($20Ks? Next!), suffered low self-esteem, seemed unable to ever apply himself, and ended up declaring personal bankruptcy not because of wanton spending but because his credit cards overtook his all too modest salary, and, generally, was what you would call "an underachiever?"

Success in professions and life in general is something that comes when a person reaches maturity, attends university, goes into a profession, starts a business, and does whatever it takes to make it in the real world, i.e. they know how to apply themselves.

The challenges presented by the real world far exceed those faced by High School students in schools with easier curricula. Even undergrad university students are considered babies by the faculty until they reach the postgraduate level where the real work gets done, so success in High School is by no means a guarantee of success in the real world. And, for many, "success" in High School by way of fairly good marks is no indicator of whether or not students have learned to apply themselves -- which is the real determinant of success in the real world.

Of course, it always looks good when Johnny gets higher grades but there's a significant difference between getting good High School grades where there is a double course load, -- and an accelerated program, like at the Associated -- and getting "good" grades at a regular public school with a regular course load. The numbers may be identical but their meaning in terms of achievement is totally different.

But it looks good, and that's where the Big Lie comes in.

There is a curious word in the Chinese language. It stands for both crisis, and opportunity because in that culture, these are one and the same.

Simply put, by its "sink or swim" policy of the time, the Associated was depriving its floundering students of the opportunity to overcome their crisis. Instead of giving these students, myself included, the tools to succeed as, by some fluke, these were given to my classmate, the doctor, the Associated let us flounder and drop out, making us back away from the crisis, often never to face it again because by going to an "easier" school, i.e., one without a double course load, things never came to a head, i.e. no crisis, no opportunity.

Why should easy be good? Why is it somehow preferable to send a student to a school with an easier curriculum? It's not easy to become a doctor. You don't get there by taking current events instead of going to medical school. And if you take current events, you won't distinguish yourself in that pursuit unless you know how to apply yourself. AND, if your course load is light enough for a person of your native abilities to slide through and to do well without ever really learning how to apply yourself, well, fuggedaboudit! Although, cosmetically, your marks may be higher in a public school than they were at the Associated, you may not be doing better at all. You may, in fact, merely be setting yourself up for a lifetime of failure and disappointment -- which is what happened -- and continues to happen -- to me.

It's too easy to be satisfied with "decent" marks in High School. The High School students who have learned how to properly prepare for success in the real world don't settle for "decent". They have learned how to really apply themselves, and strive to be the best they can be. They are achievers.

And that's the Big Lie. Johnny is not doing better just because his marks went up when he transferred schools. Unless he excels beyond expectations in his new school, he's probably just coasting, and will carry the same failure-oriented limitations into his life in the real world. Had his problem been addressed at the Associated, however, had he been taught to overcome, he would be carrying the tools of success into his post-secondary life, an educated young man.

The Big Lie is that by running away from a crisis, you are helping yourself. Not so. You only help yourself -- and grow -- by facing the crisis, and resolving it. The Big Lie implies that the student lacks the resources to do this. This is a heinous lie, in many -- if not most -- cases.

Had I been floundering at Downsview Secondary, would I have gotten help? You betcha. Had there been a huge discrepancy between my IQ and other aptitude tests, and my grades, they would have been on me like white on rice. The problem was, with the lighter course load, I never had the kind of low marks which would have raised the red flag needed to alert them to my problem, and so I carried my uncorrected deficiencies into my adult life, lamentably, much to my detriment.

And, if there are any educators out there who don't know how to get floundering students to apply themselves, here's some free advice which any good consultant would charge a lot of money for:

If a student is floundering, the fundamental thing you have to do to help them is:

Make them feel you care about them.

This is not puff, New Age, touchy-feely sophistry; it's the real deal.

To put it another way, in my opinion, it is axiomatic that students who don't know how to apply themselves, are not sure their self is worth applying.

Yes. Self-worth. You've got to give students a sense of self-worth before they'll even begin to think of helping themselves. And don't lay this on the parents. The kids are in school. If it's all the parents' fault, and the school washes its hands of the responsibility, then we might as well take the child out of the institution, and let them have home schooling. If they're not connecting in school, why be there?

Any school can turn any student around. Work with them, give them that sense of self-worth, i.e. that the student is important enough to the school to merit concern and help, and students will start to apply themselves. Stick with them, and students will not only improve but will learn the important lesson of how to put the effort in to get the result, and, the most important lesson, to have enough faith in themselves to actually believe that this is possible for them.

When the Children of Israel were in the desert, G-d did a strange thing. He fed the people manna from Heaven, an open miracle, every day. Yet, with the exception of Friday, Erev Shabbat, He did not allow them to keep any over from day to day.

G-d, of course, could have given them a week's or a month's supply, and kept it fresh miraculously, as he did with the shirts on their backs. Instead, everyone had to hope and pray that G-d would remember to feed them each and every day for nearly forty years.

The Midrash tells us that this was G-d's way of training the heart in faith. He never disappointed -- but it took nearly forty years, six days a week to teach the heart to believe. Their eyes had seen the Sea of Reeds split, and they had intellectually -- and emotionally -- grasped G-d's power and believed in Him, yet that all went out the window at the first opportunity with the worship of the Golden Calf. The vagaries of the heart, G-d knew, required more than "seeing is believing." Repeated training and reassurance over time were Hashem's prescription for achieving a faith which would endure.

The hearts of underachieving students is where the battle lies for their attaining self-worth, and, consequently, academic improvement. The internalizing of self-worth may take many tutoring sessions to sink in, but when it finally does, the foundation for real progress will begin. The heart, after all, has years to learn and reinforce a negative self-image. It is not changed in a day.

One more scene:

The scene is the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital where I worked for my 20Ks salary for twenty-five years, as a library clerk. There, on my break, I happen upon a former teacher of mine from the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. This was someone who was there from early days.

The teacher remembers me, and asks me if I graduated. I say I dropped out after Grade 10. "Aha!," the teacher says, always looking for the best in people, "you graduated from Junior High, and you work in a fine hospital like this. I'm proud of you!" I wince inwardly at the naivete regardless of whether it is real or just the result of politeness. Working in a fine hospital does not mean making a fine salary or having a fine position. I contribute to the hospital with my clerical work but I can't help but wonder what Mr. Vanstone would think of me, and all my unfulfilled potential.

"And you know," the teacher goes on, "we had an unwritten policy at the Associated, that if a student wasn't doing well, we wouldn't help them. That way, only the good students would graduate, and that would make the school look good."

And that, my friends, is the rest of the story, the missing, unbelievably cynical link, established by the founders of the Associated, and perpetuated likely unwittingly by subsequent generations of its teachers, which may explain it all.

Abandon the students having trouble. Let them flounder or coast somewhere else. They're not worth it.

Whaddayougonnado?

End of my rant. I hope youngsters in school who run into trouble like this may benefit from parents' and educators' application of the principles described above. Of course, students who run into trouble in High School could get lucky later, i.e. at university, by seeking help there, unless, like me, they are also able to get through university without hitting the wall. If they do hit the wall, then maybe the remedial work they needed as teenagers could be accomplished at university. Furthermore, perhaps lighter course loads give students who were having trouble a respite from their difficulties, a boost in self-worth, and, the magical ability to suddenly excel at their studies in a manner previously unknown to them. It's like the old joke: two drunks walk out of a bar ... Hey, it could happen ... But it didn't happen to me. Getting "better" marks never gave me the feeling I was getting any better. I remained unfocused, and the deficiencies that caused me to drop out of the Associated continue to impair me to this day. When I think of my doctor classmate who got help, I can only dream of what might have been ... And, to put a little perspective on this, I, of course, recognize that the Associated did not cause my difficulties, so I do not hold them exclusively responsible for my plight. I just feel they were my best hope for help, and they let me down when they should have helped. I also appreciate all I learned there, and I don't hate them because they thought they were doing what was best. I think they were very wrong in their approach but being wrong is a common feature of the human condition. Even I make the occasional mistake.

"In The Beginning" Hints at Evolution Part 1

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In The Beginning," or in Hebrew, "B'reisheet," is the first chapter (or, in Hebrew, "Parsha") of the Torah (or, in English, the "Bible"). Apart from its transcendent beauty, it is the subject of much debate, controversy, legislation, feuding, conflict, and polarization between the so-called Creationists (or Religionists) and the so-called Darwinists (or Evolutionists).

To avoid suspense, let me begin with my opinion, which is, that this controversy is without basis.

The supposed basis of the controversy which has caused governments to ban the teaching of the Bible in public schools is that if one interprets the Torah narrative of the creation of the universe literally, then one has to believe that in six Earth days, G-d created Heaven and Earth, and everything in them. This, of course, clearly contradicts the scientific evidence of both evolutionary, organic and inorganic development of the Earth and everything in it, apparently spanning billions of years.

As a believing Jew, I have no problem with the evidence of billions of years of development because I have my pick of any number of explanations, plus my own original interpretative theory.

For those of us who believe in G-d, it is indeed a rewarding and awe-inspiring exercise in faith to contemplate that, since G-d can do anything, perhaps He did create a complete Universe in six Earth days about 5,769 Earth years ago, in such a way that it had all the appearance -- and evidence -- of having been around for billions of years. To disbelieve that G-d could do such a thing is a grave, self-imposed limitation. After all, what is G-d, if not omnipotent? And what exactly does omnipotent mean, after all? Why should we puny humans try to handcuff the Master of the Universe with the feebleness of our own imaginations?

The i-Dea being, to stretch a little. Think of G-d ... as really G-D!!

What a concept.

What if, in fact, all the inferences of science as to the nature of the universe are based on a "factional" reality created and supported by G-d for the past almost six millennia? Not possible, the rational person says. But the rationale for the scientific person's belief system is based on appearances, not necessarily substance.

I'm just being the Divine's advocate here, but is it really necessarily so? Did we all personally witness the buildup of the Earth's surface layers over eons? Is there really only one explanation for the core samples of the Earth going down deep into our planet indicating different ages spanning billions of years? By our science, of course, there's no alternative to the chronological build up of these layers but is this explanation, derived, as it is, from our human observations, the only one? What if there were a Greater Power, believed in by many, who made it all look this way, right down to the apparent mutations of our mitochondrial DNA, but created it in a much shorter period of Earth time? The point here is, are we capable of even conceiving of a power so great as to mold the shape of mountains, continents and seas in a day?

The Earth appeared -- by the evidence of their observations -- to be flat at some point to some people who accepted it as such. Some may still (see Flat Earth Society) promote this point of view, albeit in jest. The serious point is, appearances -- and all logical inferences derived therefrom -- can deceive. And what, by the way, happens after you get to the smallest known particle, and you still can't account for what's beyond it?

Thus, the world appearing to have evolved over eons may merely be a collectively subjective perception, deduced from our studies. We, anchored in our understandings and observations of physical cause and effect, presume it must be so because it fits our view of the laws of physics and nature, as we have currently inferred them.

For those hidebound in this faith, I say "loose the shackles of your imagination." Let it play with the concept that G-d supports the universe constantly with His Will, and should He withdraw that Will, the so-called Laws of Nature would fall apart. Can we stretch our minds to conceive of a power greater than all the stars of all the galaxies or, more locally, the Sun? Able to move tall mountains and vast continents?

It is an exercise in imagination beyond the grasp of most scientifically-oriented people. Such people focus on evidence and phenomena so much that it blinkers them to what may be above such phenomena.

"The G-d above phenomena" describes the concept. To those dedicated to the study of phenomena, it's hard to see. Phenomena, we can see, or at least infer. We can't see G-d. And even inferring His existence can be risky business -- from a scientific point of view.

So, let's turn that basically Buddhist-inspired (but not necessarily approved of by Buddha) song of the late John Lennon -- may he be dwelling in the Heaven of his choice much to his delight -- one-eighty degrees. "Imagine there's a Heaven ... It's easy if you try ... No blinkers on our spirit ... G-d sits above the sky ..."

It's an exercise which many a thinking person would not dare to attempt. It takes them back to the shame they experienced growing up when they discovered there was no Santy Claus, or Tooth Fairy, or Superman (Oops! For those of you who still believed in these, sorry). They won't fall for that again, these True Believers that human beings know everything there is to know. What's real is real. I can see, taste, touch, smell, hear or at least infer it. There is nothing in the "real" world to support the concept of the almost instantaneous creation of billions of years of a planet's history.

Funny how we enjoy all kinds of fantastical, impossible things in movies, TV, and books, suspending our disbelief for the pleasure of engrossment. Why do you think we have Science Fiction? Apparently, we have a need to contemplate things beyond the world as we know it. So let's use this talent of ours, and say it again.

G-d created a world in six Earth days which, by all the evidence, appeared to have been around for billions of years. That's billions of years of history created in a few days!

Awesome, isn't it? It's one explanation embraced by a population of believers -- of different religions, by the way. And it's liberating to contemplate.

And why would G-d do such a thing? Why to give us humans, "derech ha-tevah," a natural order of things, in order to stabilize our lives in this immense universe, and provide a normal baseline for us to study and learn about ourselves and our world from our point of view, as our souls enjoy the life of experience a merciful G-d has bequeathed us.

Perhaps.

Would I, however, dogmatically insist that everyone who believes in G-d accept the story of the Creation of the Universe, and the Earth, in its most simplistic, literal form? Nope. That's why I would never call myself a "Creationist" even though I do believe that G-d created all, or that everything came from the Mind of G-d.

I stand apart from Creationists because they don't merely believe that G-d created everything; they believe they actually understand how He did it -- just from reading the Bible, -- and they insist we accept their own literal view of what it all means.

The truth is, as much as we can enjoy the Bible's description of the creation of Heaven and Earth, we just do not have clue #1 as to how it all really happened. Nachmanides, aka the Ramban, a great and revered Jewish scholar, says as much, and his knowledge of the Bible was very great. He concluded that, despite the description in the Bible, the actual events of Creation are a mystery, and that anyone who claims they know how G-d created the Universe is simply blowing smoke. Remember, though, it's perfectly kosher to believe with complete faith one way or another. Knowing for a fact exactly what the Torah means in its description of Creation is, according to the Ramban, not possible.

I agree. As powerful and evocative a narrative as is the story of Creation, it's still pretty hard to figure out how it all works from the words alone.

So, on a very basic level, you can't really say that the belief that G-d created Heaven and Earth is unscientific because a) it's a matter of faith, and, more importantly, b) we don't really know how it all went down, and therefore, we can neither confirm nor deny whether or not the Torah story of Creation is scientifically viable. We don't really understand it. The description in Genesis is not meant to be a scientific proof. It really is a poetic outline, not a detailed log.

They say that genius, like a Louis Armstrong trumpet solo -- or like his legendary vocal artistry, (I also really like the late Jimmy Durante for this, even though I'm a big fan of "beautiful" voices, as well) -- has the ability to present depth and complexity in an elegantly simple way. The genius of the Torah, in fact, sets the standard for all genius when it takes an unfathomably complex topic like the creation of the universe, and distills it into a delightfully compelling six day story. This, we must infer, is all G-d wanted us to know about it, -- for now,-- but we must not fall into the trap of believing that it is everything there is to know. For instance, the actual length of a Day of Creation could easily be billions of years. We will know more, when we know more.

In fact, as I will explain in Part 2, the purpose of describing Creation at the beginning of the Torah was not to teach us about how everything came to be but to fulfill another function. In addition, we should know that the written Torah is a kind of a short-form abbreviation of all that G-d communicated to Moses. The Oral Teachings that Moses brought down to Joshua and the Elders fill in a lot of the gaps, some of which we are privileged to know, and some of which we are not currently privileged to know but they might well have had more of the specific details of Creation.

For those, therefore, who believe that the Earth's creatures have not evolved but were created whole instantaneously, I say, "You are RIGHT" to believe what you believe. The Torah is open to this interpretation. To those who say that creatures and the world have evolved, I say the very same thing.

So, to close Part 1 of this blog, I cannot agree that the assertion made in the Bible, that a Supreme Being created Heaven and Earth and all within them, conflicts in any way with the Theory of Evolution and the theories of the development of our planet because I can't possibly know how G-d went about creating Heaven and Earth from the biblical narrative alone. Anyone who says they do, is, in my opinion, indulging in premature speculation. I cannot, therefore, possibly have a conflict between scientific evidence, and the story of Creation. They currently work on different levels. In fact, my belief is, that when we understand the world through science well enough, and we understand the Torah well enough, we will find that the seemingly disparate realities represented by each are actually one and the same.

Next time, I will describe where I find a hint to evolution in the biblical narrative.

"In The Beginning" Hints At Evolution, Part 2

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In Part 1 of this blog (which could be called a bblog, i.e. BibleBlog), I alluded to the real purpose of the Story of Creation being put at (or in) the beginning of the Torah.

According to Rashi, the premier encyclopaedic collator of commentary on the Torah, quoting a Rav Yitzchak, the Torah is a compendium of laws and guidelines for the Jewish people to live by. It should actually have begun with "Hachodesh hazeh lachem", loosely, "This month is your beginning," to denote the beginning of the Children of Israel's observance of commandments with the holiday of Passover.

As a book of laws for the Jewish people, the Torah need not actually concern itself with the creation of the universe at all. A well-known phrase embraced by religious Jews is "Torah tzivah lanu Moshe (Moses commanded us to keep the Torah)" which is all about keeping the commandments, not ooh-ing and aah-ing about Creation.

So why does the Torah start this way?

Because two Parshas (chapters) later, G-d promises the Holy Land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants.

After all, in those days, there were lots of gods. Each nation/tribe had its own god or gods. There were weather gods, war gods, Mesopotamian gods, Babylonian gods, Egyptian gods, wooden gods, stone gods, animal gods, sport gods, fertility gods, fashion gods, the list goes on and on.

The idea was that when the Jews (actually, the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob which is the Trifecta of Jewish lineage) laid claim to the land, they probably would encounter opposition from other tribe/nations, all claiming that their gods promised the land to them, too.

Thus, the reason, the Torah begins with the Creation of the Universe is to show that the G-d who made the promise to Abraham, is not a local, tribal deity but The One Great Power behind the entire universe, the G-d of all the heavenly powers and of all the tribal gods -- many of whom are, in fact, real powers in the affairs of humanity but subservient to the Ribono Shel Olam, the Master of the Universe, -- and what He says, goes.

This may be why the Torah does not go into excessive detail about Creation, in addition to the reason mentioned in Part 1, i.e., that the Written Torah is just a summary compared to the combination of it, and the Oral Torah together.

That, of course, does not mean the Written Torah is short on meaning. On the contrary, if one knows the rules of interpretation, it becomes clear that, in its succinctness, the Written Torah contains infinite myriads of secrets embedded in its words. These secrets require interpretation, and it is in this spirit of interpretation, that I find a possible allusion in the Written Torah to evolution.

Heavens, can it be? Well, I admit it sounds like heresy of the first order but hear me out.

My theory that a reference to evolution is hidden in the story of Creation is based on, as it were, "fundamental" principles of Torah interpretation. These are:

1. There are no unnecessary words in the Torah.

According to our sages, each and every word in the Torah is required. Moreover, Rabbi Akiva is said to have developed the art of understanding the meanings of the "crowns" or apparently ornamental lines shooting out from each letter of the Torah as handwritten by certified scribes (sophrim), and faithfully copied from generation to generation.

Then, because we are intellectually honest, we must admit that there is another side to the same coin, i.e.:

2. Some words in the Torah do seem unnecessary.

Often we find words that are simply not needed to convey the meaning of a sentence. They are seemingly superfluous. If the Torah were -- G-d forbid -- simply a work of literary art, we might say these additional words were there for aesthetics, i.e. metre, drama, alliteration etc. but this is definitely not the case.

This leads us to the third principle:

3. If a word is unnecessary, it means something extra.

Our sages teach us that whenever we encounter a word in the Torah which is not directly needed to convey the meaning of a sentence, then that word was put there to provide an insight above and beyond the meaning of the sentence, i.e. to teach us something.

An example would be the upcoming parsha "Lech Lecha." Here, G-d is telling Abraham (whose name at the time was still "Avram") to leave his homeland of Chaldea, and tells him "lech lecha."

"Lech," means "go." "Lecha," means "for" or "to" "yourself."

The second word in the phrase, "lecha," doesn't really seem to mean anything. G-d's command could have been communicated simply with the word "Lech," i.e. "Go from your land, the land of your birth, from your father's house to a land which I will show you."

Some might say G-d is enjoying the poetic echo in the similarity of the two words but, as mentioned above, aesthetics are not the purpose of curious, superfluous words.

One thread of interpretation of this extra word, "lecha," is that G-d is giving Abraham reassurance. It is a daunting task to just pick up and go from your native home to parts unknown. In fact, this is one of the tests that Abraham was given. Yet we see, in the word "lecha," (for yourself), a subtle hint from G-d that it will be to Abraham's benefit.

I personally, however, find another meaning in the phrase, "Lech lecha." I think it is meant to connect with the exact same phrase which occurs in an even later parsha, regarding the binding of Isaac for sacrifice. There, when G-d tells Abraham to take his only son from Sara up to Mount Moriah to be bound on the altar, G-d again uses this formulation, "Lech lecha." Another rule of interpreting the Torah is that if identical or very similar unique phrases or actions occur in the Torah, then they are tied together, and their relationship teaches something. More on "Lech lecha" when we arrive at its second occurrence in the Torah.

Now, how does evolution fit into these rules of interpretation?

As far as I know (which is not all that much -- I did not go to Yeshiva, and I am not familiar with all the commentaries), what I am about to say is a chidush, i.e. something new. It may, of course, actually be old (Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun.") but I have not seen it anywhere.

Given the above-stated principles, let us examine the first sentence in the Torah, namely, "In the beginning, G-d created Heaven and Earth," as conventionally translated.

Now, let's look again at that phrase in the light of the beginning of this blog entry.

To state the glaringly obvious, the entire phrase "in the beginning," is unnecessary.

When else would G-d have created the world if not at the beginning? Of course it was in the beginning; that goes without saying.

Yet the Torah says it, so there's got to be a reason -- other than drama or poetry -- for this phrase.

Moreover, In the beginning of this blog entry, I stated that Rashi cites a comment that the purpose of using the Story of Creation in the beginning of the Torah is to establish the rights of the descendants of Abraham (later, that branch known as the Children of Israel) to the Holy Land.

If indeed, the purpose of starting the Torah with the Story of Creation is to establish the Jewish people's rights to the Holy Land, by showing that it is the Creator of All who made this covenant with Abraham, the phrase, "In the beginning," is also unnecessary for that purpose.

The purpose of showing that the G-d Who promised Abraham that his descendants through his son Yitzchak (Isaac) would inherit the Holy Land is the Master of the Universe could have been perfectly fulfilled without the phrase "In the beginning" or its Hebrew counterpart, the word "B'Reisheet."

The Torah could have said:

"G-d created the Heavens and the Earth," or if you will, the Hebrew, "Elokim bara eyt hashamayim ve'-eyt ha-aretz." This could alternatively be rendered in English as, "It was G-d who created the Heavens and the Earth."

That, after all, is supposed to be the point, that it was G-d who created everything, the same G-d who promised the land to Abraham.

Some may say we need the word, "B'Reisheet," because it starts with the second letter of the alphabet, Beit, indicating a prior Realm of G-d and/or another level of existence prior to our universe, symbolized by the first letter of the alphabet, Aleph, but if you had "Elokim barah eyt hashamayim etc.," you could teach the same concept by saying, "The first word in the Torah is a name of G-d, indicating that He preceded All Creation which is alluded to in the second word, "barah," and these two words begin, respectively with the letters, Aleph, and then Beit, indicating their order.

So, the phrase "In the beginning" is needed neither contextually nor subtextually, and now, we have a problem, or, just as the Chinese use the same word for both crisis and opportunity, an opportunity. What, according to Principle 3 above, can we learn from this unnecessary phrase/word, "In the beginning/B'Reisheet?"

And here's my disclaimer: there are certainly theories other than mine on this topic. One I have heard comes from the Vilna Gaon who said that the word "B-Reisheet" is a whole Torah in itself in that it contains all the mitzvahs of the Torah encoded, if you know how to manipulate the letters.

For instance, the Vilna Gaon simply took the letters of the word "B'reisheet," and using each letter to begin a word, found the commandment of "Pidyon Haben," the redemption of the firstborn male, a process of paying a token amount of money to a member of the priest class to "buy back" one's firstborn male child from G-d, the Master of the Universe having stipulated that all first fruits of the Jews are His, He having smitten the fistborn of Egypt in order to effect our escape from slavery.

The Gaon (a title reserved for great Torah geniuses) is said to have simply taken the Hebrew letters of the word B'Reisheet in their existing order and found "Bincha Rishon Acharei Shloshim Yom Tifdeh," i.e. "Your first son, after thirty days, you shall redeem," -- the exact commandment, in a linear contraction where each letter of the phrase/word "B'reisheet," starts a word.

The purpose, then, of having this seemingly unnecessary phrase, "In the beginning," according to the Vilna Gaon, may well be for us to understand that the Torah is full of encoded secrets -- even games -- for devout and brilliant Torah scholars to enjoy, and for us mere mortals to marvel at. More on this later, G-d willing, in my currently unfinished entry, Abraham and the Torah codes.

As far as my response to the question of the non-necessity of the word/phrase "B'reisheet," what I am about to offer is not an opinion; it's an observation.

We may, in fact, have a hint to Evolution, here, as this word/phrase, "B'reisheet," can have another meaning than the one we expect.

I suggest we note that this word/phrase can mean, "At its beginning" instead of "In the beginning."

And what can we possibly mean by "At its beginning?" We can mean "B'shoresh," or, "At its root."

If we see the word "B'Reisheet," therefore, as something that contributes to the meaning of the passage rather than something which does nothing, then we must acknowledge that the Torah may be telling us how G-d created the Heavens and the Earth, not when.

When you look at it this way, a reading suggests itself. That reading is, "G-d created everything at its root, i.e. at its beginning," i.e., not in its final form.

We say about G-d, "Mabit l'sof davar b'kadmato." "He sees the end of something in its beginning." This teaches us that G-d clearly sees the end result of all events at their inception.

G-d may well have seen the end result of the forms which would evolve from Creation but He may not have begun there. The implication of reading the first sentence of the Torah as "G-d created Heaven and Earth at their root," means G-d did not create everything in its final form but at its root, and allowed it, over billions of years, perhaps, to evolve.

Interestingly, Adam, the first human, was created last. Maybe, as suggested by a comment to this blog (I don't respond to comments anymore; I'm trying to have a life), Adam was created in his form instantaneously, and placed whole into the world, a world, I would suggest, which could still very well have evolved over time. Or, maybe there is an evolutionary link between Man and our DNA cousins, the primates, and the Torah is saying the G-d created Man out of the dust over eons, and, finally, when the physical vessel was ready, G-d breathed the life of a soul into him.

Evolutionists have yet to find that missing link between humans and other species, suggesting a quantum leap for mankind somewhere in the past, though we share a great deal of DNA with primates. Even if the universe and almost everything in it may have evolved from its root, there still is room for those who need it, to believe that Man did not -- but to me, that's really not the point.

Evolutionists may well be surprised to hear that an educated reading of the Torah may point to their belief. The Torah may have given us a hint, to those of us who are open to it, as to what really happened.

One should not take the Torah and its interpretation lightly. What interests me, here, is the possibility that it is the Torah itself, -- and not Charles Darwin or a geologist or a physicist, nor even a rabbi -- that points to the idea that the Earth evolved over time.

I am more than well aware that allowing for evolution in any form conflicts with the fundamentalist understanding of Creation but I go where the Torah leads me. In this instance, it suggested to me that I follow the rules, and take another look at the phrase "In the beginning." And, as I said in Part 1, we really cannot presume to know from the Written Torah exactly how Creation occurred. I, for one, therefore, am delighted to keep an open mind on this exhilarating and awe-inspiring topic.

The First Sin: what is the Torah teaching us?

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AS with many of my blogs, I've inserted a title and a few words to hold a space until I can complete this topic.

Basically, to me, the Torah is musar, i.e. teachings for living life. It contains direct guidelines (the mitzvot, or commandments), and also teaches in many subtle ways, through its words and narratives.

The story of the first sin has, to me, a very clear lesson to be applied to living life.

It is that we must never confuse the guidelines of man with directives from
G-d. One way of saying this is, never confuse a "miderabonim" with a "midoraisa."

"Miderabonim" means "from the rabbis," i.e., the religious obligations we take upon ourselves which were ordained by ruling bodies of rabbis, like the Men of the Great Assembly, and other Sanhedrins. These rules have -- under normal circumstances -- the force of the mitzvot, commandments from the Torah.

But, wait a minute. Doesn't the Torah tell us we can neither add nor subtract from the commandments it gives us, in written and oral form? How can bodies of rabbis add to the Torah's commandments by obliging us to do things which the Torah does not prescribe?

The answer appears in the beginning of The Ethics of the Fathers ("Pirkei Avot"), a compilation of great teachings and sayings. The line of Torah knowledge is traced from Moses to Joshua to the Elders to the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly, and one of the things brought down by this illustrious line of teachers is "Asu syag la Torah," make a fence around the Torah.

What this means is that if the Torah proscribes certain acts, like eating meat and milk together, it is permissible to make a fence around this law by adding restrictions which will prevent someone from falling into sin inadvertently.

The well known "syag" or fence around the rule of not eating meat and milk together is that chicken is designated as meat by the rabbis when, according to the Torah ("midoraisa"), it is not, and, strictly speaking, can be eaten with a glass of milk.

According to the Torah, chicken is like fish, the flesh of a living creature which can be eaten with dairy meals. I don't know why this is so, but it is. My question would be, what about the quail that Hashem force-fed the Children of Israel when they wanted meat? That was meat; why not chicken?

That there is an answer to my question, I have no doubt, and, anyway, that's not the point. The point is that chicken is definitely not classified as meat.

Does this mean, then, that you can go to a kosher dairy restaurant and have a nice chicken dish smothered with melted cheese?

No.

Why not? Because the rabbis felt that some people inevitably would see people eating chicken with dairy products, and mistakenly assume that as a living land creature, chicken is a form of meat, and that this, therefore, authorizes the eating of dairy products with all meat -- which would be a sin against the Torah.

So, in order to avoid people falling into serious error, the rabbis made a fence, keeping people away from the danger of eating meat and milk together by outlawing the eating of chicken and milk.

A fence, thus, is a protective barrier which keeps one from coming too close to danger. It is not an additional mitzvah -- commandment -- but is a regulation enacted to prevent the transgression of a Torah precept, i.e. eating milk and meat together by adding a restriction to the existing mitzvah.

Once Again, It's Noah Bashing Time, Part 1

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Ah, the lovely post-Summer, pre-Fall season. The holidays are over, the leaves are starting to fall, and there is a fresh, cold nip in the air. 'Tis the season to observe the time-honoured, annual ritual of dissing, bashing and besmirching the reputation of Noach (in English, Noah).

In Yeshivas, Chusun's Tisches (speeches by grooms and others at weddings), pulpits, Bar Mitzvahs -- just about everywhere where Divrei Torah are given, -- you can hear the unremitting, unrelenting loshon hora (evil, damaging speech) against Noach, the man who merely merited to begin a new order of humanity on the face of the Earth.

We all know the story. The generations in which Noach lived had become irretrievably corrupt and perverted. According to the Midrash, humans were making ketubas --wedding contracts -- with animals; everybody was stealing from and killing each other; there was no fear of G-d and, of course, they all felt they were invincible. All flesh had become so corrupt that G-d made the decision to wipe out all living things except for Noach, his family, and his passengers in the Ark. And the fish. The fish didn't sin, and, therefore, were not wiped out. They say that if the souls of Tzadikim, righteous people, need to be reincarnated in the world, they often have the merit of coming back as fish for a blissful life.

G-d, we should note, does not usually take an active, dramatic role in the world. Ordinarily (or extra-ordinarily, actually), G-d sustains the world at every moment by exercising His miraculous Will --without which the Laws of Physics would fail, -- and also plays a hidden role in countless miraculous events the world over. Rarely, however, does G-d take centre stage.

In fact, there is a rule of thumb one may infer from the Torah as to when exactly G-d does intervene in the course of human events. These, it seems to me, are the great turning points, when things are either at or past the point of no return, or rapidly approaching it.

When the Children of Israel were slaves in Egypt, they had become so beaten and oppressed that their spirits were broken. Many had adopted the idolatry of the Egyptians. The sages tell us that they had fallen so far, spiritually, that they were at the 49th level of Tuma (spiritual impurity), and were one short step away from the dreaded 50th level, at which their souls would, chas v'shalom, have been lost forever, i.e. the point of no return. Enter the Ribono Shel Olam with great signs and wonders to save the day, and to re-charge, like a car battery which has been drained to the point where it can no longer start the car, the faith of the people. The Torah is very clear that the signs and wonders of the Exodus were not really to persuade the Egyptians to release the Children of Israel but to re-awaken our ancestors' faith in Hashem.

In Parsha Noach, the sins of the people had been so egregious, that they had reached -- and passed -- that point of no return. They had reached this, by the way, because they did not have suffering to expiate their sins. It goes without saying that they didn't feel the need for repentance to expiate their sins, this generation so enamored of itself that it no longer even had a concept of sin. Yet if they had known pain and suffering, it might have saved them as an atonement for the sins they wouldn't even acknowledge. Alas, they did not merit to have these veiled blessings, and having reached the point of no return, "merited" annihilation. Enter G-d with the Flood.

The Zohar tells us that pain and suffering is how the Jewish people will survive the accusations against them in the End of Days. Yes, we have sinned but we have also suffered mightily, and the punishments we have already endured will keep us from annihilation by paying down the debt incurred by our sins. Just as convicts pay their debt to society with prison sentences, and are then released, so we who suffer punishments in this world have many of our sins wiped off the books.

My Theory of the Point of No Return, by the way, is why, when people complain to me that G-d was not "there" at a particular catastrophe, I say "Thank G-d" because I believe G-d only manifests, only plays a public role, when circumstances are so dire and extreme as to literally be at the point of no return. If G-d does not play a public role, then the circumstances, though bad, were not life-threatening to the Jewish people -- or the world -- as a whole.

Similarly, when people ask me how I can believe in G-d when he hasn't done any open miracles since the ones recorded in the Torah during the Exodus from Egypt, and they need to see miracles with their own eyes in order to believe, I also say "Thank G-d," because this means to me that our circumstances were never that desperate in all our history since the Exodus, that G-d felt the need to openly intervene again. In other words, G-d forbid G-d should have to do miracles. I'm happy to be living in such times as when open miracles are not necessary. The acquisition of faith is currently a matter of many factors, including upbringing, study and choice, and we are not, chas v'shalom, living in a time when the entire Jewish people is in danger of losing all contact with the belief in G-d.

Why G-d has not quietly -- rather than openly -- intervened in dire circumstances which may not have been quite at the point of no return, to me, is explained by the need, as explained above, for pain and suffering. Without the punishments, our accusers might -- G-d forbid -- persuade the Heavenly Court that we, like the Generation of the Flood, are, chas v'shalom, beyond redemption.

In Part 2 of this blog, I will get back to the disservice to Noach we tend to indulge in whenever his parsha comes up.

Once Again, It's Noah Bashing Time, Part 2

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Noach, according to our sages, is one of the three tzaddikim -- righteous people, -- along with Adam and Abraham who were pillars of the world, i.e., without whom there would not be a world. Noone -- except perhaps three men mentioned later -- matched Noach's righteousness and closeness to Hashem in the three generations which his life spanned, and Noach lived through what must have been the most traumatic, incredible experience of them all -- the destruction of the entire world as he knew it, and the responsibility to start it up all over again.

The story of Noach, however, did not start with the Flood. Midrashim tell us he was a Saviour of the generations into which he was born. According to these sources, a promise was made to Adam that the curse he had incurred on humanity by eating the forbidden fruit, namely, that man would break his back to get produce from the ground, would be lifted when a child was born circumcised. This child was Noach.

When Noach was born -- circumcised, -- the thorns and thistles that crowded the ground, making it difficult for people to sow crops, disappeared, and the land became workable in a normal fashion.

When Noach was born, farm animals which had been disobedient to their masters, suddenly became cooperative.

Noach personally instituted the care of all the generations of a family's elderly at a time when people had been looking after their parents only. He invented farm implements, all of which made planting and reaping much easier for the people, who had been using their hands to perform these functions.

Noach was a blessing to the world in even more ways than these. His birth brought about a miraculous change in the way the waters rose and ebbed underneath the surface of the earth which helped the dead rest in peace.

In other words, Noach was not just an ordinary guy who happened to be righteous. He was a great benefactor to humankind before the Flood.

And yet, as mentioned in Part 1 of this blog about Noach, it has become fashionable down through the generations to level as many cheap shots at him as people's gleeful, self-righteous zeal allows.

"Ish tzaddik, tamim b'dorotov," says the Torah about Noach, "A righteous person, perfect in his generations." And the bashing begins. I have a theory as to why this bashing occurs which I will get to later.

"According to the Torah," say Noach's detractors, "Noach was a tzaddik in his generations. Let us read this as only in his generations, which were evil. He would not have stood out in subsequent generations which were good.'" This, of course, contravenes the Jewish principle of "Hevey dan l'chuff z'chut," or "Judge people as righteous when you have a choice."

It also is a form of reductionism, by ignoring the unique string of powerful words the Torah uses to describe Noach. In the phrase, "Ish tzaddik, tamim b'dorotov," there are three superlatives -- a fact which noone seems to notice because the first word is usually skipped over by the eye. Yet that first word is more than ordinary. The words are: 1) "Ish" which means "man" but it is not just a description of the person's gender and age; it is an honorific reserved for great men, important men, masters, leaders, 2) "Tzaddik" which means outstandingly righteous, and 3) "Tamim" which means "perfect," or as Onkelos translates in Aramaic, "Sheleem," which I would translate as "complete," i.e. Noach was a complete Tzaddik, he wasn't a feeb; his will to serve Hashem was not subject to weakness. I don't know of anyone else in the Torah who is described with three attributions of honour. I could be wrong, but Noach may be the only one.

A possible exception might be Yaakov (Jacob) who is described as "Ish tam, yoshev ohalim," as opposed to his twin brother, Eisav,"ish yodeah tzayid, ish sadeh." Yaakov is (1) an important man, (2) whole, complete and (3) sits in tents (studying the ways of Hashem) as opposed to his brother Eisav who is (1) an important man who (2) knows how to hunt and is (3) a man of the Great Outdoors.

Notably, Yaakov's description does not include the word "Tzaddik" to go with "complete," while the threefold description of Eisav has nothing to do with righteousness but does give us a clue as to why their father Yitzchak (Isaac) loved him, as I note in my commentary on parsha Toldot.

The kicker here, though, is that after the tripartite description of Noach as an (1) "ish (2)tamim, (3) tzaddik bedorotov," for those who might have any doubts about Noach's stature, the Torah immediately tells us in no uncertain terms a fourth superlative: "Et ha-Elokim halach Noach," i.e. if anyone still had doubts about him, they should know that Noach walked with G-d. I don't care what generations you're talking about, walking with G-d is pretty big and unambiguous in my book -- which is the Torah. It's Biblical. It's Scriptural. It's big.

Unfortunately, there are real rabbinic sources for Noach bashing, including the Zohar, but I think that, being flesh and blood, these authors have erred, although I will extend to them the courtesy they didn't extend to Noach, of judging them to be righteous in that their intentions were to teach important principles through their criticism of him. Ultimately, though, I think they fell into a trap, a trap that almost everybody keeps falling into year after year which I will describe later.

As for giving Noach the benefit of the doubt, one can easily read praise for Noach in the Torah's word "b'dorotov" ("in his generations"), given that he stood out as a righteous man when all prevailing influences were towards evil, and that he stayed consistently good through not one but multiple generations.

Having committed the error of denigrating Noach, having ignored the threefold accolade given him by the Torah, and diminishing his stature in their own minds, Noach's detractors must now look for "evidence" to back up their loshon hora.

One of the most specious of the put-downs of Noach is the highly insulting -- and wrong -- description of him as a "Tzaddik in Peltz," or someone who is righteous as long as he can wears his fine furs (peltz = pelts), and live in comfort, and who would never abandon his luxurious estate if that's what he would have to do in order to help someone. I get really incensed when I hear this one, so I hope I will remain coherent in my writing (if, of course, I've been coherent so far).

The "Tzaddik in Peltz" accusation against Noach also involves an unfavourable comparison to Abraham, regrettably forcing me to dismantle the comparison's basis for praise of Abraham in order to invalidate its conclusion.

Noach's detractors say: "When Abraham was told that Sodom and Gomorah were going to be destroyed, he did not stay silent. He tried to save the cities by negotiating with G-d that if there were even ten righteous men, bargained down from his original fifty, the cities should be saved. G-d agreed. What a caring Tzaddik was Abraham."

By contrast, say Noach's detractors, when he was told that all flesh on the planet would be destroyed, he did not try to intercede with G-d. Therefore, Noah was a "Tzaddik in Peltz," which literally means a person who is righteous as long as he is living comfortably, wearing his fine furs ("peltz") who won't trouble himself to care for others.

Pardon me, but what a perfect example of loshon hora, a false statement which does grievous damage to the subject.

First of all, as cited above, Noach did care for his world; he was not aloof. His birth alone improved the world, and through his direct efforts, many beneficial changes came about. As for wearing fine furs, and not getting his hands dirty, how many of the tzaddikim currently reading this blog have ever mucked out a stable? Has anyone reading this swept out the excrement of horses, elephants (imagine what a job that was), and all kinds of animals, transporting the manure to the hold of a ship? How many bandwagon Noach bashers out there have fed thousands of creatures each and every day with the food that is specifically right for them? How many reading this blog have actually built their succahs with their own hands instead of buying a prefab one or hiring someone to build it for them, and, oh yes, how many have spent 120 years building an ark from scratch with their own hands, even planting the trees for the wood?

Tzaddik in peltz???

If Noach were alive today, I'd tell him to launch the biggest slander and libel lawsuit the world he founded has ever seen.

It would be a class action suit in reverse, one tzaddik against a whole host of individuals in all corners of the world who persist in making and writing false and defamatory statements about him.

And what about the comparison to Abraham? Noach is criticized for not trying to intercede with Hashem to have mercy on the people and save them from annihilation, as Abraham supposedly did regarding the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorah. Futhermore, Noach is criticized for not going among the people, and bringing to them the Word of G-d in order to convert them to faith in Hashem. Abraham, say the Noach bashers, was well known as a proselytizer for Hashem, building up a great following.

Great. Can anyone identify any distinctions between the generation that Abraham lived in, and the generation of the Flood?

Oh, I know. The Torah tells us. "Hishchit kol basar et darko al ha-aretz." In the generation of the Flood, all flesh, including humans, animals and other creatures had corrupted its way on the land. Good luck trying to bring the Word of Hashem to the animals and insects and birds etc, but how about those people? You know, the ones who had no use for G-d? Who only sought material pleasures often at the expense of their neighbours? Who believed they could withstand anything G-d threw at them, and survive? And whose only righteous men, Chanoch, Yered, and Metushelach had passed away?

In Abraham's generation, the people were at least worshippers. Yes, Abraham converted idolaters to monotheism but these people clearly were believers to begin with. They had a sense of and respect for powers that were greater than they were. And, by the way, where are they now?

So is there any comparison between the world Noach lived in, and the world Abraham lived in? Is it fair to say that Noach failed to do what Abraham did? NO! Because Abraham didn't really do it, either.

If you look closely at the story about Abraham negotiating with G-d to save Sodom and Gomorah, you will see that Abraham did not care a fig for the reshaim (evildoers) of these cities, virtually the entire population. Abraham was only concerned with the tzaddikim, if there were any. "Lord," he said, "would you really sacrifice fifty righteous men just to get at the reshaim?"

And, if you insist on saying that Abraham's concern for any tzaddikim who might be there was really a veiled way to "trick" G-d into saving all the people, then, most telling is what Abraham did not ask of Hashem. Think about it. Did Abraham, the Master Proselytizer, turn to G-d and say,"Lord, please, let me go to Sodom and Gomorrah; let me preach your Word to the people so that they may do teshuva (repent) and be saved."

Shucks, no. He did not. And since Noach lived in a time when, in the years before the Flood, apart from himself, there were no tzaddikim, his world was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Thus, the bottom line is, when it came to completely evil people, Abraham did exactly what Noach is being accused of doing: nothing. The principle of "hocheyach tocheeyach," that surely, you must warn sinners to correct their ways does not apply when it's "over butl," when there isn't the slightest chance that your remonstrations will be even listened to, and Abraham did not waste his breath. One cannot, therefore, say that Abraham was superior in any way to Noach in this regard because he didn't lift a finger to try to redeem the evildoers of Sodom and Gomorrah which was the same situation as Noach faced with the Generation of the Flood. Oh, yes, they say that, although he would not go among them, Abraham "prayed" for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah -- from the comfort of his own home, of course.

Maybe, when you come to think of it, Abraham was the Tzaddik in Peltz. Raised in the court of the king as the son of the chief idol maker, able to take vast riches with him when he had to leave his homeland, proselytizing through lavish banquets. It makes you wonder if Abraham could have mucked out stables. As much as I have respect and love for Abraham, I can't picture him with a shovel in his hand. As solicitous as he was in bringing guests home, he was equally speedy in ordering his servants, -- and his wife, and his son Ishmael -- to do all the work of preparing the food -- and any heavy lifting.

In reality, Noach did much more than Abraham for the evil people of his time. Where the tradition arose that Noach did not "pray" for his generation, I don't know, but, given that the Torah says he was a complete Tzaddik, I wouldn't trust it. Furthermore, for 120 years, he made quite a spectacle of himself building this huge ark, and, as G-d had wanted him to do, when people asked him what he was doing, he did engage in "hocheyach tocheeyach." He warned the people that unless they changed their evil ways, G-d would send a Great Flood, and explained that the ark was his insurance policy against such an eventuality.

And what did the Generation of the Flood do? They laughed. They mocked Noach. In fact, Noach was mocked for three generations expressly because he was a Tzaddik, a type of person completely foreign to the ways of the times, and here we have the key, in my opinion, as to why there is Noach bashing today.

We Jews believe in "Mazal," the destiny a person has, as decreed by Heaven, and, yes, written in the stars. The destiny can be improved with the proper right actions but if no intercessionary actions are taken, there is a programmed plan for each person.

Noach's Mazal vis-a-vis the opinions of people about him, i.e. his reputation, was to be mocked.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Anyone who engages in Noach bashing is simply falling into the trap of Noach's mazal, which means that those who besmirch Noach's reputation today are doing exactly what the reshaim did all those years ago. Today's detractors of Noach are succumbing to the same pattern adopted by the unthinking sinners of Noach's time.

And what about the "elephant in the room" that I haven't yet addressed, that Noach upon disembarking, planted a vineyard, and got drunk. Except, of course, he didn't. First, he built an altar to G-d, and made sacrifices of ritually pure animals. You usually don't hear that part when people are busy knocking Noach. Oh, yes, and G-d blessed Noach and his sons.

Secondly, I'm sorry but I just don't buy the pet theory which Rashi brings down from the Midrash, that when the Torah says "Vayachel Noach, ish ha-adamah, ..." that Noach, the master of the ground, began by planting a vineyard, the word "Vayachel," means that he debased himself by planting something associated with the profane, "vayachel" being the same root word as "chulin," or that which is non-holy.

But if wine -- which comes from the vineyard -- is unholy, why then did we pour it on the altar in the Bes Hamikdash? And why, when the people had the wherewithal, did the rabbis have them take the Sabbath Kiddush instituted by Ezra and the Anshei Knesset Hagedolah as part of the Amidah prayer into their homes Friday night, adding that it must be recited over a cup of wine?

In Judaism, wine signifies auspicious, holy, and joyous occasions. It's not possible for wine to be "chulin." So Noach couldn't have been making himself profane; he was making Kiddush, something which would be used for holy purposes!

So, what then, does "Vayachel" mean, if not to signify "chulin?"

Everybody knows that "vayachel" also means "he commenced." To date, it has been thought that this would be an unnecessary phrase; that it would be more than adequate to say "Noach planted a vineyard."

Except, there may well have been a purpose in saying, "And Noach began," because the vineyard was the first thing he planted after the Flood, and this indeed began the next phase of his life. Note the Torah does not call him just Noach, here, but adds the designation, "ish ha-adama," or master of earth. Why? In my view, because the Torah is telling us Noach is switching roles, changing hats, starting over. Where heretofore Noach has been known as a Tzaddik of his generations, and then the Saviour of life on Earth, the Torah is telling us "Vayachel," he now began a new phase of his nine hundred years plus life, as an "ish ha-adama," a master cultivator of the earth. So "Vayachel" means he began a new role/chapter in his life, not that he made himself profane.

OK, he had a little too much to drink, and was sleeping it off in his tent. After all he had been through, I wouldn't begrudge him . Those of us who criticize Noach for drinking too much, don't have an appreciation of the enormity of what he had just been through. Finally, the job was done, the pressure was off. Who wouldn't kick back? You'd have to be crazy not to, in my opinion.

Two famous sayings of a revered principle of Yiddishkheit are: (1) "Hevey dun l'chaf z'chut," and (2) "Al tadin et chavercha ad she-tagiyah limkomo." or (1) Give the benefit of the doubt, and (2) Don't judge your fellow human being until you've arrived at the same situation." Many cultures have sayings like this, i.e. don't judge a man until you've walked two thousand steps in his shoes (because then you have a two thousand step head start, and you have his shoes! Kidding.)

Hands up, all of us who have watched the destruction of the entire world as we know it, and had the responsibility of saving a remnant of all its creatures, as well as the responsibility to start up civilization again .................Anybody? Nobody?
Gee, I guess noone has a right to judge Noach at all, then, since noone else has been in that situation -- nor ever will be.

What happened next is certainly not Noach's fault either. As Noach slept it off, his son Cham emasculated him, in order to prevent him from having more children with whom Cham would have to share the wealth. This is why when Noah saw what Cham had done, he cursed Ham's fourth son, Canaan. Cham had seen to it that Noach would not have a fourth son, so Noach saw to it that Cham's fourth son would be accursed.

But who was the bad guy here? Noach or his son Cham?

Why blame the victim? When we insist on blaming Noach for this awful event, are we acting like Noach's good sons, Shem and Yafet, backing up to cover him, or are we perpetuating the evil of Cham by "emasculating" Noach, i.e., taking away all the credit he is due, and blaming him for this terrible act? It seems we're just falling into the trap of Noach's mazal, and making it happen over and over.

Ultimately, how we treat Noach is more of an indication of where we're at than where he was at. If we insist on tearing him down, we reveal outselves to be no better than the people of his generations and his son, Cham. Here, I have taken some of the cornerstone criticisms of Noach, and shown them to be baseless or, at the very least, highly questionable. Will you, the reader, ignore the case I have made, and continue to parrot these criticisms mindlessly, year in, year out, in unthinking obeisance to the prevailing ignorant self-righteousness and pleasure in finding fault --even when there is none -- or will you break the vicious cycle of blaming Noach, and teaching it to your children who will then teach it to their children?

Will we, as a people, overcome our base inclinations, and act like Tzaddikim, or will we follow the old, familiar, easy patterns of the resha-im, and continue to walk in their unholy footsteps? Surely it's time to stop indulging our prejudice against Noach, and to step up, shake the mud of the resha-im from our boots, and show the world that Jews are not slaves to Mazal, the not-immutable destiny that is written in the stars, and stop bashing Noach, a Tzaddik who didn't deserve bashing then, and who doesn't deserve it now.

Or do we have to wait for Mashiach for this change to occur?

And I'm not -- chas v'shalom -- claiming any special "ruach hakodesh," to have arrived at my conclusions. It's all there on the pages of the Written Torah for everyone to see. Maybe if more students of the Torah went to university and took literary analysis, they could see it, too. A simple analysis of the pshat -- basic narrative -- teaches us the unmistakable truth: the good sons, who walked backwards with a blanket to cover up their unconscious father without glimpsing his nakedness, were obviously fulfilling the mitzvah of "kibud av v'aim," i.e., to honour one's father and mother. The bad son, rather than fulfil this mitzvah, attacked his father, castrating him, not exactly a "kibud," or honour.

In fact, to attack one's father, as Cham did, in addition to breaking the commandment to honour one's father may also be seen as a chilul Hashem, a desecration of G-d's holy name. Why? Because if you divide the Ten Commandments into two columns, as many do, Column A (since it's bound to come up, all comparisons to a Chinese restaurant's menu aside) features the commandments dealing with man's relationship to G-d ("beyn adam l'makom"), like "Thou Shalt Not Have Any Other G-ds ..." while Column B deals with man's relationship to his fellow man ("beyn adam l'adam)," like "Thou Shalt Not Murder."

Seemingly anomalously, the commandment to honour one's parents is in Column A. Since it deals with the relationship of a child to a parent, should it not have been in Column B?

There are numerous answers to this question. Regardless of which one you choose, though, it's pretty clear this grouping implies that the proper relationship to a parent is tantamount to the proper relationship to G-d Himself.

The term "b'nei Noach," i.e., sons of Noach, gets bandied about a lot, and often it is mistakenly thought to apply only to gentiles, i.e. Jews have to keep the whole Torah but the "sheva mizvot shel b'nei Noach," the commandments for the sons of Noach, are for all the world to keep, as if Gentiles are the "Sons of Noach," not Jews. Although this may well have been the intent of the commentator who coined the phrase, this is wrong. We are all, Jew and Gentile alike, the sons of Noach. Jews really do have forefathers, i.e. four fathers. Noach is really our first, followed by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The problem is with the coining of the term, "bnei Noach." Whoever coined it, either consciously or unconsciously, tried to institute a falsehood -- one which unhappily has been unthinkingly adopted by many -- that Jews do not descend from Noach.

But we do. We are descendants of Noach's son Shem -- although Noach's critics do not act like it.

We must re-learn the fact that Noach is one of our fathers. And when we indulge ourselves in criticisms of him, taking endless pleasure in pointing out what we think his shortcomings are, comparing him unfavourably to others, it gives rise to a question we must ask ourselves.

Of the two kinds of sons Noach had, which kind are we?

Rather, though, than characterizing people one way or another, my latest thinking on this topic is that we have within us a "yetzer Cham," and a "yetzer Shem," i.e., two opposite drives: to behave like Cham or to behave like Shem. This, of course, is similar to the "yetzer ha-rah," and "yetzer ha-tov," the drives to sin or to do good.

Cham, when presented with his father in a vulnerable position, attacked and castrated him. Shem and their third brother, Yaphet, would not even look at their father's indisposition, and walked backwards toward him, looking the other way, while they stretched out a blanket over him.

Since giving the person the benefit of the doubt is a form of "looking the other way," commentators who fail to do this with Noach regarding his perceived failings are not following the Torah. Instead they are letting their "yetzer Cham" rule them.

Ultimately it's absurd for a Noach basher to say that someone the Torah goes to unprecedented lengths to describe with a four-fold "shvach" (praise), i.e. 1) Ish, 2) Tsadik, 3) Tamim, 4) Et ha-elokim halach Noach, that he was 1) a great man and leader, 2) righteous, 3) whole and perfect, 4) who walked with G-d, is considered so merely because he wasn't robbing, killing, and indulging in perversions.

By that measure, we all would be considered Tzadikim. I don't know too many people who steal, kill or indulge in the kinds of corruption and perversions as the people in Noach's time. So, if Noach was considered a tzadik by not doing horribly evil things, doesn't this make us all tzadikim? Most commentators -- even the Noach bashers -- would have to say, "Oops,not."

But these same commentators who insist on using the "in his generations" phrase, li-g'nai, against Noach, never apparently understood this, that by saying Noach was a Tzadik only in his generations, they are implying that by refraining from the evils of those generations, one earns the title "tzadik."

Their "yetzer Cham" apparently impelled them to adopt an absurd, facile, untenable position, instead of the "yetzer Shem" position -- which makes more sense -- that "even as he lived through several most evil generations, Noach steadfastly stood out, and cleaved to Hashem." Later on, we will see Rashi use this same "shvach" (praise) to describe Yaakov (Jacob). When Yaakov says "Im Lavan garti (I dwelled with Lavan), Rashi uses the letters in the word "garti (I dwelled)," to spell "taryag," the numerical equivalent of 613 -- which is the famous number of commandments a Jew is obliged to keep. In Rashi's eyes, Yaakov is saying, "I dwelled with Lavan, but notwithstanding the kind of person he is, I still guarded myself to keep the commandments. "Im Lavan garti, v'taryag mitzvot shamarti."

True, the latter instance is saying more than Yaakov was "simply" a tzadik but that he was diligent in keeping the precepts of the Torah -- except, of course, that he didn't. By marrying two sisters, Rachel and Leah, Yaakov transgressed against Torah law.

But the Torah hadn't been given yet, and Rashi is happy to give Yaakov the benefit of the doubt. And to give Rashi the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that he found no carping about Yaakov to quote against him as he does for Noach.

Which all goes to show us that Noach had a particular "karma" to be ridiculed and attacked. Isn't it time for this to stop? I think so.

Lech Lecha

9999-12-27T22:23:00.000-08:00

"Avram avinu, padre querido, padre bendicho, luz de' Israel ..."

Thus goes a Ladino (Spanish Jewry) song about Abraham, which either by coincidence or design contains an interesting cross-language reference illustrating Abraham's importance to Jews everywhere.

"Avram avinu" is the classic Hebrew designation of Abraham as our father. This is followed by Ladino words "padre querido," (cherished father), "padre bendicho" (blessed father), "luz de israel" (the light of Israel).

Abraham, of course, is the first of our three Fathers, along with his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob (Israel). They belong with our Mothers, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah.

The heritage of each Jew is that we all have a connection to the Torah not only as individuals but as family. The genius of the Torah is that there can be no such thing as a Jewish orphan. We all have a connection to the founders of our faith; we can always open the Torah and commune with them; our First Parents are always there, day in, day out, year in, year out, always ready to teach us something new from the pages of the Torah. We can visit anytime, and they will gladly receive us.

Our father Abraham, who started it all is, according to the song, "the light of Israel," and rightly so, for it was Abraham who brought G-d back into the world.

Humanity is a curious species. Even after the lessons of the generations of the Flood and the Dispersal, knowledge of G-d diminished from generation to generation after Noach, and idol worship rose to prominence.

Briefly, the deal with idol worship is as follows: initially, there was knowledge of G-d. Then, people started "dealing directly" with the powers that G-d had created, i.e. worshipping the sun and the moon and the stars -- all of which had spiritual power endowed within them by their Creator.

Apparently, people were satisfied with the results they got from worshipping these powers, as well as occult powers they developed to perform magic ("powers of Tuma"), and started to forget the Maker of it all.

Now, if you worship the sun, and it happens to be cloudy, what can you do? Why you can make a statue which symbolizes the sun, and worship that. Then the clouds will never get in the way, and you can still have the right "kavanah" (proper intent) to reach the sun with your prayers.

After a time of worshipping the statue of the sun , the statue itself, by necessity, acquires an aura of holiness, being the object of fervent prayers, and before you know it, you're -- G-d forbid -- bowing down, and talking to idols as if they were real gods themselves. Forgotten even is the power the idol was made to represent.

At it's lowest form, what started out as, at the very least, an exercise in appeasing real forces in the metaphysical universe, becomes a very silly practice of believing in sticks and stones -- which Hashem makes fun of as not speaking, eating, smelling etc in Parsha Va-Etchanan, and, as will be discussed here later, which is echoed in the prayer Hallel, quoting Psalms.

Abraham, as a boy, had the good fortune to be the son of Terach, the king's idolmaker. When his father was in the shop making the idols, Abraham saw their origin, and viewed them as ornamental furniture. Having seen their beginnings, he wondered why people were bowing down to them. Who bows to furniture?

Unfortunately, it's not such a cut and dried issue, as we see how Jews themselves worshipped idols generations later in the land of Israel notwithstanding the Torah's warnings against this practice.

So, how can it be? How could supposedly intelligent people worship man-made objects? The Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham grew up was not a primitive backwater. It was the pre-eminent civilization of its day. These were smart people.

In Hallel, the Jewish prayer of praise to G-d on special holy days, there is a verse from Tehillim (Psalm 115) which echoes the actual word of G-d in Deuteronomy, making fun of idols, "They have mouths and cannot speak, eyes and cannot see, ears and cannot hear, noses and cannot smell, hands and cannot feel, legs and cannot walk, and they cannot make a sound from their throats, ..." i.e. they are inanimate, and therefore, incapable of responding to prayer, so why should anyone pray to them?

There are answers, some of which we can understand, and some which we are given to know but cannot understand. For instance, I'm still waiting to figure out what G-d means when He says in Deuteronomy that when we are exiled to foreign lands and find these mute, inanimate objects of worship, we will cry out to Hashem and we fill find him.

The answers we can understand are that, yes, man-made objects do not become animate and talk to us (unless we're talking about divining objects like Lavan's teraphim which we will read about in an upcoming parsha) but, then again, when you think about it, G-d Himself does not talk to us either, these days.

Only great prophets can lay claim to being spoken to directly by G-d. Only men endowed with "ruach hakodesh" or the holy spirit, can prophesy. When Eldad and Medad ran through the camp of the Israelites in the desert prophesying, they were reported to Moses as if they were doing something wrong. Moses' reply was "if only everyone in Israel could prophesy."

The truth is, if you look at prayer to G-d, versus prayer to idols, you would be hard-pressed to see a difference in the results on a daily basis. Both are acts of faith, and as we know, G-d does not grant us directly all we ask, and does not communicate His plans to us, i.e. G-d can also be seen as silent. It is only in a showdown like the prophet Elijah had with the prophets of Baal, that we find a clearly drawn distinction.

But such one-offs fade in the memory of people who in their frailty require continuing hope in their lives. One powerful attraction of worshipping idols was that at least you could see what you were praying to, unlike G-d who is not visible. Once you had that concrete object in front of you to focus on, you could direct your prayers in an organized way, hoping they would enter through the portal of the idol into the realm of spiritual causation.

That there were unholy magical powers is demonstrated by the ability of Pharaoh's sorcerers to duplicate some of the miracles performed by Moses, including perhaps the dumbest act of all, doubling the number of frogs in Egypt just to show they could do it. There are a rare few instances in the Torah where one can actually hear G-d laughing from behind the matter-of-fact words of the text. This is one of them. The Torah seems to say, incredulously, "and they went ahead and filled Egypt with another multitude of frogs," as if it were saying, "I kid you not; they actually did this." One can imagine the Egyptian sorcerers saying to themselves, "Man, that's a lot of frogs to inflict on ourselves and, boy, do all those dead frogs stink! Especially when there's twice the original number But, hey, we showed 'em!" Sorcerers, yes; rocket scientists, no.

But maybe they did learn from their experience. The very next plague, instead of duplicating it, they tried to undo it -- without success, of course. This last statement is a chidush of mine. Most commentaries read the passuk (sentence) as saying "they tried to bring out lice from the land [just as Aharon and Moses did]. I, however, in light of my view that G-d shows His incredulity that the sorcerers of Egypt should be such dummies as to double the punishment of frogs on themselves, allows them to show some brains after all, i.e instead of trying to duplicate the plague of lice, they try to "lehotzi," to get them out of the land. It's definitely not the conventional view, but I'm not a conventional person.

So, idol worship was really not just bowing to furniture. There was something to it. The inanimate objects may well have been portals to "powers of tuma," and may have yielded results on occasion despite the fact they couldn't see, hear, smell, feel, walk or talk in the physical plane.

And, the act of worshipping itself can be self-validating, i.e. the more one puts into worshipping an object, the more one believes in it because one can feel one's focus increasing and deepening with practice. It is this feeling of depth which may provide incentive to continue the practice. "Mitzvah goreret mitzvah, aveirah goreret aveira," doing a mitzvah, a commandment from G-d, leads you to do another mitzvah, committing a sin leads you to commit another sin."

And, for the part we don't really understand, our sages tell us that up until the time of the Men of the Great Assembly at the time of Ezra and the early part of the second Temple , there was a special "yetzer," or desire, to worship idols embedded in the hearts of people. We are told that, mysteriously, this was taken away, never to return, at this point in our history.

Which means two things. Firstly, it means we cannot feel superior to those who worshipped idols because we don't have the same spiritual makeup they did. We do not have the yearning to worship idols inside of us, so who are we to cast aspersion on people who were fundamentally different, whose drives we can't possibly understand?

Secondly, it points to the greatness of Abraham. If we understand that idol worship was not just a naive error on the part of primitive people but a response to a real part of human nature which no longer exists, we must have a deeper appreciation of what he was up against, and how much he stood out from the world of his day.

Idols were also a big business in those days. In addition to being objects of worship, they were status symbols (or should I say "statue symbols?). The bigger the better. The gold and silver ones inside the house, the wooden ones outside.

Abraham is our First Father of Judaism because in a time when the whole world as he knew it was worshipping idols, he managed to re-discover G-d, the Master of the Universe. His being the son of an idol maker may have helped but the truth is Abraham had a great soul and was a genius of the spirit the way a great scientist who discovers something is a genius of science. Everyone else saw the same world that he did but only he was able to deduce and connect to the Ribono Shel Olam. There are different stories as to what his age was when he "hikir at boro," or "recognized his Creator," but at any age this is an awesome thing, and it's something that we struggle with each and every day.

Every day when we awaken, we are asked to remember who gave us life, and all day long we are challenged to remember G-d. Abraham set the bar for this. He set it very high.

The word in the Ladino song, "luz," means "light." However, by a strange coincidence, it also is a Hebrew word. And what does it mean?

When Mashiach comes, and it's time for "t"chias hametim," the resurrection of the dead, G-d will reconstruct bodies for us from our resting places.

There are some who doubt this. OK. It's a free country. We can believe what we want. Nevertheless, the reason people doubt the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is often due to what I call "human hubris." Human hubris is the idea that humanity is the ultimate arbiter of things, as when doubters might say, "Resurrection of the dead from the graves? Impossible! I can't see how that could ever happen."

The hubris in the above attitude is in the "I", i.e., "I know everything there is to know. If I can't see it happening, it can't happen." Anyone who thinks they know it all, especially at this stage of human knowledge when we still haven't found a cure for the common cold (I take tons of vitamin D every day and have checked my blood level with my doctor to make sure it doesn't reach the toxic level. This is supposed to make my immune system more alert and ready to fight invading organisms. Fingers crossed ...) is dreaming.

G-d, of course, doesn't limit himself to humans' capabilities. And, according to our sages, G-d doesn't even need much of the body at all in order to reconstruct it. In fact, all G-d needs is the "luz," which, in Hebrew, means the tailbone. Under ordinary environmental circumstances, it will survive virtually anything, and will be there for G-d to work with when the time comes.

Interestingly, the Generation of the Flood will not be resurrected. This is because G-d made the waters of the Flood so extremely hot, beyond any normal Earth temperature, that even the people's tailbones were melted. This could be the reason cremation is forbidden to Jews. The extreme heat of cremation melts even the tailbone, depriving the possibility of resurrection to that person.

When we consider the double meaning of the word "luz," we can see how appropriate this is in the abovementioned Ladino song extolling Abraham. For not only is Abraham the light of Israel as the bringer of knowledge of G-d but he is also the irreducible cornerstone of the Jewish faith, who, according ot tradition, even survived a fiery furnace himself. In a metaphorical sense, Abraham found the luz of faith in G-d when there was almost nothing left of it in the world, and, resurrected knowledge of G-d for us, and the world at large. Perhaps this is how we, the descendants of Abraham, came to merit resurrection, "mida k'nedgged mida", quid pro quo.

Vayera, Part 1

9999-12-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

Parsha "Vayera," has so many historic events and lessons in it, that I am hard-pressed to pick one or two to talk about. In this parsha, we have the miraculous prediction and the actual birth of Yitzchak (Isaac) to aged parents well beyond the normal time for conception and parturition, his subsequently being bound up on an altar (the "Akeida"), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the banishing of Abraham's Egyptian consort Hagar and their son, Ishmael, and the shockingly ignominious beginning of the genetic line leading to Maschiach through daughter-father relations.

Yikes!

OK, so let's talk about "bikur cholim," which means "visiting the sick."

Why?

Because, according to our sages, it's the first mitzvah taught in this Parsha, and we have a principle in Judaism, "Ain ma-avirin al ha-mitzvah," i.e., "We do not skip over a mitzvah when it presents itself to us." This usually means in deed, i.e. when the opportunity to do a mitzvah arises. Nevertheless, it seems to me that with a little imagination, it can be seen to apply to learning mitzvahs from the Torah as they present themselves to be learned.

I personally also hold by the related principles, "Ain ma-avirin al ha l'chaim, v'al ochel chinum," i.e., "One should not pass by any opportunities for a libation or free food," -- but these are "chumras," or stringencies, which I have personally taken upon myself -- although they are, in fact, kept by a large number of people, many of whom take greater care in keeping these stringencies than the basic principle itself.

The Parsha begins: "Va-yera eylav Hashem b'elonay Mamre ..." "And G-d appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre, as he was seated at the front of his tent in the heat of the day," and ... and ...

And nothing.

Usually, when G-d appears to someone in the Torah, He has a purpose, an agenda, i.e., "And G-d spoke to Moses saying, 'Tell the people to do this and that, and then this and that, and when the're through with that, to do this and that' ..." or "And G-d appeared to Bilam in a dream and said, 'Don't you dare curse the Children of Israel, for they are blessed."

So, here, G-d appears to Abraham, -- not an everyday occurrence, -- and then says nothing during His manifestation .

What's the significance? As I've said in previous blogs, the Torah is embedded with all kinds of meaning, especially when something seems out of the ordinary, like an unnecessary word or phrase or, as is here, a non-sequitur statement.

"Nothing?" say the sages. "G-d said nothing?"

"Then, that's the point."

Since G-d had no particular commands to impart to Abraham, no assurances, no information, then He must have had another purpose.

The clue as to what's going on, say the sages, is in understanding Abraham's situation at the time. According to the commentaries, this was the third day after Abraham had entered into a covenant with the Master of the Universe in the most personal way, through circumcision.

Abraham was ninety-nine years old at the time, and it is said that the third day following a circumcision of an adult is the most painful, so Abraham was not well.

This, say the sages, is the key to understanding G-d's presence. G-d is teaching, by example, the mitzvah of "bikur cholim," or visiting the sick. But not only is G-d teaching us that it's a mitzvah to visit the sick, he is teaching us how to perform the mitzvah properly.

Hence, G-d comes to visit but says nothing, teaching us that when one visits the sick, it is not a time to bend their ears with endless stories, empty -- even if well meaning -- assurances, pep talks, and the like. Just being there is apparently the preferred method. This is not to say that conversation is forbidden but apart from a sincere "How are you?" it might be better to leave the initiation of any conversation to the patient.

And just because G-d is silent, doesn't mean He isn't communicating. Tehillim (Psalms) says, "Yom le-yom yabia omer ... ain omer v'ain dvarim," i.e., [G-d's] speech pours forth every day, and His wisdom fills the world without a word ever being spoken or a sound made. So, perhaps, we should try to communicate our support for the sick person without "hucking them a chinek," just making noise, to avoid uncomfortable silences. Let the silence be a comfort in itself, conveying without a spoken word, our love and concern for the patient.

Immediately, with the very next sentences, an additional principle of visiting the sick is demonstrated by G-d.

While G-d is visiting, Abraham espies three wayfarers passing by -- which is why he was sitting in the front of his tent, so that he might find someone to extend the mitzvah of hospitality to, even during his painful recovery. Abraham immediately jumps up, ignoring his Visitor, preferring to run out to corral the three dusty passersby, asking them to come in and refresh themselves. "Adonai, im na matzati chen b'eynecha, al na ta-avor me-al avdecha," he says apparently to the leader of the three wayfarers , "My lord, if I may find favour in your eyes, please do not pass by your servant"-- but instead of the more common word, "Adoni," Abraham addresses him with the version of the appellation which we use for G-d Himself. Now, here we have a bit of a problem.

Abraham has just ignored his Guest, the King of Kings. It's as if he had said, in today's wireless phone parlance, "Excuse me, I have to take this," which invariably indicates to the person present that there are more important people than them to talk to. And, to add insult to injury, he steals the word we use to address G-d, and uses it for a desert wanderer!

A line of interpretation does exist, though, that Abraham here was actually talking to G-d, not the wayfarer. In essence, he's saying, "G-d, don't go away! I'll be right back after I take care of these strangers." This is really not much better, though, than, "Excuse me, I have to take this," when it comes to giving respect to the Master of the Universe. In both cases, he is putting G-d on hold.

In fact, Moses, knowing the story, may have felt this to be a slight which needed rectifying. This may be why, when he beseeches G-d not to destroy the people for worshipping the Golden Calf, he uses almost the exact same word formulation -- close enough to make it an obvious echo of the original phrase, as spoken by Abraham, --: "Im na matzati chen b'eynecha, Adonai, yelech na Adonai b'kirbenu ..." "If I may find favour in your eyes, Lord, please walk, Oh Lord, in our midst."

Often times things happen in the Torah to rectify what occurred in an earlier situation -- which is something I will address -- G-d willing -- in Part 2 of this blog regarding a clue about another matter found in this Parsha. Here, it is possible Moses felt that Abraham had -- albeit with no ill intent -- "rejected" G-d, and that by repeating the same words, and using the name for G-d twice, Moses would "balance the books,"and appease G-d by assuring Him that it is He we most want to walk among us, three wayfarers notwithstanding. In addition, by echoing the phrase Abraham spoke in this Parsha, Moses was probably trying to remind G-d of Abraham himself, and His love for him, and by extension, his descendants, as well as to recall Abraham's kindness and mercy towards others at a time when his children were in great need of kindness and mercy -- from G-d -- themselves.

In this Parsha, in response to Abraham's apparent slight, G-d, again, says nothing -- which implies consent, i.e. it's OK to diss G-d (G-d forbid!).

The problem clearly is, Moses' belated "tikun" notwithstanding, that in Judaism, there is a principle, "Melech ain mochel k'vodo," a king cannot forgo his honour.

Kings, after all, are not just individuals but represent all they represent. King Louis, the fourteenth, made the famous observation, "L'Etat, c'est moi," "I am the State." Kings represent whole countries, and cannot humble themselves without demeaning the honour of their dominion.

G-d, as the King of kings, and King of Heaven and Earth would have every right to insist on commanding the respect and deference due Him at all times, not just to properly honour his subjects but because He uniquely represents what is sacred, what is holy, what is Above All, which his subjects must not forget to their detriment. Yet here, -- and later on, in another Parsha, as I will -- G-d willing -- point out -- G-d shows that the greatest of kings are mochel their kavod, i.e. do forgo the honour due them -- under certain circumstances. His silence is acquiescence here. It's OK for Abraham to run off from G-d's presence, and to abjectly fawn over three travellers. Why?

Because the Ribono Shel Olam, is teaching us another aspect of how to perform the mitzvah of visiting the sick: one must put aside one's honour in deference to the good of the patient. Clearly, in Abraham's case, he yearned so deeply to do this mitzvah that it was necessary for his health.

Sometimes, doctors determine, for example, that a patient is not well enough to receive visitors. Yet instances abound when someone who has made the trip to a hospital will insist on seeing the patient anyway so that (a) their trip won't be wasted, and (b) so they'll have the mitzvah of bikur cholim! In other words, forget about the patient, the visitor's needs come first. "Do you know who I am?" is a question not infrequently directed to "uppity" hospital staff who will not permit a person to visit a patient who needs to be left alone.

Thus, Hashem teaches us that when Abraham chooses to ignore Him in favour of the three travellers passing by, it's not a problem, since deference must be given to the needs of the sick person. And if G-d Himself can forgo his priority, so should we follow his divine example, imitatio dei, when fulfilling this important mitzvah.

Perhaps most importantly, there is one more clue about visiting the sick embedded in the Torah narrative, and the midrashic elaboration of this visitation from Hashem. According to the Midrash, it was not mere happenstance when Abraham espied the three travellers crossing in front of his tent that day. Eager to do the mitzvah of "hachnasas orchim," i.e. taking in guests, Abraham had positioned himself in the front of his tent, despite his pain from his circumcision.

It was G-d Himself, says the Midrash, who sent the three travellers, so that Abraham could fulfill his heart's desire to be of service. True, they had a mission to inform Abraham of his upcoming fatherhood to Yitzchak (Isaac), and about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. G-d, says the Torah, chose to send them on a day when Abraham was basically sick in bed.

This leaves us to infer any number of possible guidelines regarding visiting the sick. In fact, I would declare it open season on interpretations. What does this aspect of the narrative mean to you, in terms of visiting the sick? I can think of a few things but I may revise my thinking. That's the beauty of a Living Blog. It's never really finished, and can be emended anytime.

In fact, this last part is already an emendation. I'm adding this long after posting my original blog for parsha Vayera because this just occurred to me, and it's a useful model for studying Torah, i.e. that the Torah is inexhaustible and you can always learn new things from it.

So we get that silence is preferable to mindless prattle when visiting the sick and we get that we should not hold our egos above the welfare of the patient but this additional part of the story probably is also meant to teach us something.

Essentially, G-d knew that Abraham yearned to do something, and He made it happen. He let Abraham have fun by purposefully sending the three passersby, and He let Abraham entertain them even though Abraham was not all that well.

So much for the "sick role" that some people adopt when they are ill. The Torah here is, for one thing, teaching us that a person does not have to act sicker than they are. The passersby did not know, ostensibly, that Abraham was recovering from surgery. G-d let Abraham interact with them as if he wasn't sick at all.

When we visit the sick, how can we apply this principle?

There was a great, innovative filmaker of the silent era named Abel Gance. He created what we now call "split-screen" or "multi-screen," and a host of other techniques. He was one of the first great filmakers, and he said, "With enthusiasm, one can do anything."

Abraham was very enthusiastic about doing the mitzvah of hachnasas orchim. G-d arranged for Abraham to have guests so that he could fulfill the mitzvah, and this clearly invigorated Abraham. It probably contributed to his recovery.

Before we visit patients, therefore, can we identify any enthusiasms, interests they might have? If they are as well as Abraham was under the circumstances, and not incapacitated, can we provide something they might find of interest, as G-d did for Abraham? If we know they like a certain type of book, why not bring one for them? If they like to play chess, cards, listen to music, why not try to facilitate these interests by bringing a book, a game, a CD? Not everyone sick in bed is "out of it," and suffering terribly -- except sometimes from boredom. Some patients would jump at the chance to have some fun.

G-d knew his patient well. We might have to do a little research. We could ask family to tell us what are the person's interests. Rather than a perfunctory magazine from a hospital Gift Shop, maybe we can actually target the person's interests and get them something that will create that healing rush of enthusiasm in them.

Of course, to look clearly at Abraham's situation, we must note that he is self-motivated, and not pushed into his actions by G-d. G-d merely facilitates what Abraham wishes for, passersby to entertain. He does not make even the slightest suggestion to Abraham as to what to do.

Learning from all this is a subtle business when we try to deduce ways we can use when we visit those who are ill. We may not have the ability to create a situation which fulfills the desires of the ailing person. We may, however, take note that G-d does not stand in the way when Abraham follows his desires, and now we may see that this act of seeming deference is even more than just a forgoing of His honour.

If we analyze the situation, it seems to be saying that even though someone may be thought to be ill, it is worth considering letting them get out of bed in order to do something they love to do. Caregivers may find this a dangerous attitude. "What if the patient gets worse?," they would say.

Abraham, of course, may have been a special case, a kind of superhuman exception to the rule. Then again, we are told by commentaries that he was in pain. We do know his pain was self-limiting, and not life threatening. Thus, the only downside of encouraging Abraham, as G-d did by providing the opportunity to abandon his recovery, was if it were to delay his recovery or cause a relapse, which it did not.

Could the fact that Abraham's eagerness to interrupt his recovery was for the sake of doing a mitzvah have had anything to do with G-d's enabling behaviour? And if so, how do we learn anything from this to apply to others?

Ultimately, common sense must rule. We are not expert judges of the situation as G-d was with Abraham, and thus we don't just want to let someone out of a sick bed so they can go shopping ...

Or do we?

Perhaps we can see if there is a safe way to facilitate an ailing person's enjoyment and sense of purpose insofar as the model Abraham provides is that personal drive and enthusiasm trumps pain and quiescence.

The above is an attempt to arrive at general principles but on a practical level, the fact of the matter is, in the old days, most caregivers, nurses, doctors etc. would themselves have a coronary if they saw a recovering person jump out of bed and run to greet someone and then run to order the preparation of food for a guest. "Get back in bed!" they would cry. Yet, more and more, we are seeing early release of patients who have minor surgery, like for a hernia, or even after giving birth. Hospitals have reduced recovery periods drastically for these and many other types
of cases, and perhaps we have here yet another example of the Torah being ahead of its time, by a few thousand years, of course ...

To sum up, what I learn about visiting the sick from the scene beginning this parsha, is that the patient comes first, and one is to forgo one's ego in making a visit. If one is granted permission to see the patient, silent companionship is healing, and lends itself to listening more than talking. For someone who is very sick, that could be all that's needed. For someone who is not so sick, finding something which will kindle their enthusiasm is the order of the day. I've read, for instance, that Bingo over the hospital closed circuit TV network has done wonders for patient morale. How about a phone-in show? I'd personally like to see "play areas" for patients on the floors. Mini golf, anyone? Arcade games? I'm not kidding. The parsha is telling us something, here. It's bold and dramatic, and we might want to pay attention.

And one final thing to learn: here, G-d Himself fulfills the maxim, "Say little and do much."

This may be something to aspire to in many of life's situations.

This is also the Parsha which completes the pair of occurrences of the phrase "Lech Lecha." I will address this, iyh, in Part 2.

Vayera Part 2: Abraham and the Torah Codes

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This is a beginning of a blog on this topic. I'm just getting started on it. Given my penchant for rumination, it will take a while to complete.

In the past number of years, a new element of appreciation of the Torah has surfaced, called the Torah Codes.

The Torah Codes are uncannily prophetic words and phrases apparently encoded into the Torah, as deciphered by some simple and some not so simple methods.

The original story is that a computer scientist decided to use a computer (go figure) to count fixed intervals of letters from the first letter all the way through to the end of the Torah. In other words, starting with the first letter, the program produced a string of every other letter in the Torah, then a string of every third letter, every fourth etc. etc. Then he did the same thing starting from the second letter of the Torah, and so on and so forth.

It was a bit like SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, where giant radiotelescopes are trained on sectors of outer space, and the noise they collect is translated into reams and reams of letters and numbers, the idea being to search through all the data to see if there is anything intelligible in it which might point to life elsewhere in the universe. [Ah, but is there intelligent life on Earth? Maybe we should try to establish that, first].

At any rate, much to the "surprise" of the researchers, intelligible phrases and words did pop out of the text of the Torah. I put "surprise" in quotes because I don't think they were surprised at all. People have probably known about the codes in the Torah since Moses brought it down from Mt. Sinai. I'm sure a lot of manual counting of letters has gone on through the ages yielding these intriguing results. I've heard about a Rabbi Weissmandl doing this type of work mid 20th Century, and I'm sure he was not the first.

Some of these codes are just simple words or phrases which do not have a predictive aspect to them but are compelling all the same.

For instance, every Friday night before the evening meal, when religious Jews say Kiddush, i.e. the special recitation sanctifying the Sabbath, we quote directly from the Torah about how all the work of creation was finished, and G-d rested on the seventh day. "Yom ha shishi. Vayechulu hashamayim vehaaretz etc." There is a code in this section of the Torah.

Start from the last letter of "Shishi," which means "sixth," i.e. as with all other days of creation, its completion is recorded by the statement, "The Sixth Day."

Of course, as we all know, the completion of the sixth day, is also the completion of all of Creation.

From this last letter of the entire creation, then, count -- tellingly -- seven more letters, writing down the seventh letter. Continue on in this fashion, and you will come up with the word, "Yi-S-R-A-E-L."

This is one thing you can most definitely try at home. Look it up either in a siddur (prayerbook) or Chumash (Bible). Start with the the "yud," the last letter of the word "shishi" (sixth), After the "yud," count another seven letters. See what the seventh letter is. After that one, count another seven letters, and record the seventh letter. Do not count the start letter in each series of seven, i.e. the "yud" we began with. Count seven letters after the start letter.

It doesn't take a master interpreter to figure out that the purpose of this code is to indicate that the Sabbath, i.e. resting on the seventh day to bear witness to G-d's having done so Himself after creating the Universe, is for the Children of Israel. Moreover, it may well mean it's not for anyone else.

It's a good thing, for instance, that the Church made its Sabbath on Sunday -- and that other religions keep other days -- because it is apparently a spiritual crime for anyone other than a Jew to observe the Sabbath on the seventh day, in the way halacha, Jewish law, requires of such observance. While it's unlikely that any gentile will, in fact, understand and keep all of the laws pertaining to the Sabbath, it's still a good idea for them to observe it on another day, just on the off-chance they somehow will.

They say that any non-Jew who keeps all the laws of Sabbath on the seventh day will suffer the death penalty from Heaven, i.e., G-d will see to it that, one way or another, they are punished. When someone is converting to Judaism, for instance, and they haven't yet completed their conversion, they must violate the Sabbath in some way while yet practising its observance, i.e. turn on a light, strike a match etc.

Not that Jews want to convert anyone. We're not in that business, and initially try to discourage any such intentions. The real work may be to try to regain the interest of the millions of Jews out there who are alienated from their own religion. I was one of them. My story, which G-d willing, I will add to the blog, is one of a desperate escape from a cynically nightmarish Hebrew Day school situation, and then finding shelter at a secular High School from which point on, secular life seemed the reasonable way to go for me -- although, all through my twenties, I was actively involved in seeking G-d and enlightenment in a personal quest outside of organized religion. But I digress.

So using the YiSRAEL example as our proof, we see the Torah clearly contains codes within it's textual structure. And please don't tell me that a million monkeys typing forever are bound to come up with whole words or phrases. The Torah will go on forever but it's text is clearly defined, i.e., it has a fixed number of letters. Furthermore, these codes cannot be found in documents other than the Torah, not in Shakespeare, not in any other work, at least as far as the straightforward counting of letters in simple intervals goes.

Now, in addition to being suggestive, as the YiSRAEL code is, some are downright prophetic. In the section where Joseph is in prison, a code has surfaced which in Hebrew, says: "Mahapachat Tzarfatit," and "Bastilia." These words mean "the French Revolution," and, of course, where it all started, the prison known as "the Bastille."

Now, how can a document -- the Torah -- which has been verified letter by letter as to having been in existence thousands of years prior to the historical event of the French Revolution allude unmistakably to it in clear, recognizable terms?

Here we have an indication of the transcendent nature of the Torah, i.e., that its secrets clearly supersede the time/space continuum, as we know it.

[to be continued ... G-d willing, I will find the exact details of the Bastilia code and provide them, as well as explain what it all means --- and doesn't mean]

Chayei Sarah: two aspects

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"Chayei Sarah" or "The Life of Sarah," the title of this Parsha, paradoxically begins with her death. Thus, if we take the Torah seriously, we are to learn something -- or a number of things -- about death, from our Matriarch Sarah's story.

Let's look at our own lives, then, and the deaths we all eventually have to deal with.

When a loved one dies, one sentiment often expressed by the bereaved is the "If only."

"If only we could have caught it earlier," i.e. the disease that killed the deceased, " they'd be alive today." And, in many cases, this is absolutely true. Modern medicine can do miracles if given enough time to treat a person's ailments.

Other variations on this theme abound. "If only the ambulance had gotten there sooner." "If only the deceased had gone to the doctor when they started to feel poorly instead of waiting." "If only the doctor had been smarter in making the correct diagnosis right away, instead of (as is common on the TV medical drama 'House,' for instance) going through a process of trial and error." "If only the deceased had not picked up that infection in the hospital (known as a 'nosocomial,' i.e. caused by being in a hospital, illness). " "If only he hadn't taken that trip." "If only there hadn't been such a long delay between the doctor's diagnosis and referral, and the actual surgery itself."

I actually had a cardiologist say to me, after my late father, a"h, had suffered a massive second heart attack, "I wish I had done an angiogram after his first," something I had inquired about at the time but was told it was not routine (that was then, of course; nowadays, angiograms -- the infusion of the heart's vessels with a blue dye which clearly shows on a video screen how blood is flowing through the heart and where it is blocked, are, in fact, routine). If only, I had broken with the prevailing medical policy, and insisted ...

A key factor in the "if only," is that it is after the fact, after the patient has died, and, probably as a part of grieving, it fulfills a function of expressing our disbelief that this person has been taken from us, and not a little anger over the frustrations we experience over "what should have been," and not a little guilt over letting bad things happen. But it won't, of course, be of any Earthly help to the departed, as it might have been when they were alive.

If we look at how our Mother Sarah died, it might give us another perspective, and ease our potential frustration over the mistakes and misadventures that "shouldn't have happened," which conspired to take our loved one from us.

Sarah's death, in fact, is a textbook case of mistake and misadventure, a seemingly capricious and cruel Act of G-d which also shouldn't have happened.

So what happened?

Sarah was one hundred and twenty-seven years old but in good health. Her husband, our Patriarch Abraham, would go on to live to one hundred and seventy-five (see my comments in the blog on parsha Toldot), and, so, too, might Sarah have, had it not been for the -- apparently -- cruel concatenation of events which befell her.

Abraham, you see, had taken Yitzchak, their only son, up to Mount Moriah, to be bound up on an altar for sacrifice. Not an act of caprice, this, but a serious test of Abraham, and a direct command from G-d. More on this when I fill in the "back catalogue," of commentary on Vayera, G-d willing.

Thankfully, Sarah was kept in the dark. Abraham was not about to tell his wife what he knew would destroy her, so he told her he and their son were going away to study the laws of sacrifices.

The Midrash provides a very colorful account of what happened next but b'kitzur, in short, Sarah found out, had a heart attack, and died.

In the longer version, Satan himself, approaches Sarah, and asks her if she knows where are her husband and child. She tells him what Abraham had told her, that they have gone to study the laws of sacrifice. Satan says, "I think Yitzchak is the sacrifice."

Sarah denies this but it bothers her. She then goes to visit the last remaining giants in the land, and asks them to survey the surrounding lands to find her husband and son.

They stand up to their full height, look around, and say, "Yes, we see your husband and son on top of a mountain. Your son is bound up on an altar, and your husband is approaching him with a knife ..."

Before they could say any more, Sarah cried out, and died.

If only the giants had been asked to find Abraham and Yitzchak a minute later, they would have seen Abraham joyously taking his very much alive son down from the altar. A few moments later, they would simply have seen them both sacrificing a ram together.

What terrible timing! But for the absence of a few scant seconds to let the true story unfold, Sarah would not have died! She and Abraham and Isaac would have lived happily ever after.

What can we learn from this? We learn that G-d has a plan for us, and when time is up, it's up. Conversely, of course, if your number is not up, and you haven't done anything to place yourself unnecessarily in danger, then someone could point a gun to your head and pull the trigger, and it would misfire, likely killing your assailant.

How, though, do we account for the seemingly cruel way in which Sarah was taken?

Sarah had reached the end of her allotted time on Earth. This kind of reckoning is not available for us to know. G-d's accounts and plans are of an order beyond our understanding.

But G-d had a problem. The Angel of Death could not take Sarah because she was such a devout Tzadekess, righteous person, that her entire being was always suffused with G-dliness and focused on the Divine. According to our understanding, the Angel of Death can have no power to act over someone cleaving to the Divine -- or studying Torah.

According to tradition, King David is a case in point. Having learned what no mortal should, the intended date of his death, King David decided the knowledge was given to him for a reason and it was up to him to escape his fate. So, on the appointed day, which, by the way, was the holiday of Shavuos, he did what he had to do to defeat the Angel of Death -- he immersed himself in the constant study of Torah. The Angel of Death, however, had a card up his sleeve, and created a loud distraction outside King David's room of study. The loud noise distracted the King momentarily from his study of Torah, and the Angel of Death snatched his soul.

Thus it was with Sarah. Since her mind was always on G-d, the Angel of Death could not take her soul at the appointed time. The entire scene with the giants and the inauspicious moment they espied Abraham and Yitzchak (Isaac), served one purpose: to shock Sarah so much that for a brief moment she would lose her concentration on G-d. It worked, and the Angel of Death was able to take her soul.

Thus what seems cruel was simply a mechanism to enable her to go at her appointed time. Had this incredible scene not occurred, she might have missed her train.

That there are "more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies," to adapt a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, is key to understanding this. "My thoughts are not your thoughts," says G-d, and we would be wise to accept that there are reasons for everything that goes on in our world, regardless of how cruel or unfortunate things may seem.

That is why the "If only" sentiments we often experience at the passing of a loved one should be informed by the understanding that G-d has a plan, and what seemed to us to be avoidable -- even stupid -- circumstances and events leading up to what we think is the untimely demise of our mother, father, son etc etc. were actually the hand of G-d at work. I have my own saying that when it's a person's time to go, G-d makes the doctors stupid, i.e. that mistakes are made in the care of a patient, diagnoses are missed, etc which conspire to bring that person to their death. Bad luck, misadventure, negligence, it's all part of the plan.

So, when we see mistakes happening in the care of our loved ones in hospital or anywhere else, should we sit back and say, "I guess it's G-d's will. It must be their time to go."

No! Of course not! When Moses was told he could not enter the Promised Land, he never ever stopped praying to G-d to reverse his decision (see the parsha "Va-techanan" in the Torah, and its commentaries). Moses beseached G-d more than 500 times, even though this was an edict from the mouth of G-d Himself. From this, our sages learned that even when the sword is at your neck, you must keep praying to G-d for salvation and deliverance. There is never an end to hope, prayer, and action.

So what does it mean? It means that we should be on the alert for the "If Only" circumstances before a person reaches death, and fight like the Dickens to reverse the situation. If someone is feeling poorly, make sure they go to the doctor in a timely manner. If someone is not getting good treatment from one doctor, get a second opinion. The time for identifying problems is when the person is still alive, not after.

After the fact, however, when the end has come, we must realize that any misadventures that led to the person's demise were G-d ordained, and we must not torture ourselves about them.

So Sarah was buried in the Ma-arat Hamachpela, The Two-Tiered Cave, and a very interesting story lies therein ... leading us to the second aspect of this blog.

The Ma-arat Hamachela is a cave in Chevron which -- apart from a secret function to be described here later --contains the earthly remains of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivka, Yaakov and Leah, and the head only of Eisav. In other words, it's the place where our forefathers are buried, -- in Hebrew, "kever avos,--" and for that alone, it is considered one of the holiest sites of Judaism. It is purchased in this Parsha, Chayei Sarah, by Abraham so that he may bury his wife, Sarah. Some say its purchase is recorded in the Torah to provide some kind of proof that this land was legally obtained, and belongs to the Jews, i.e. the descendants of Abraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.

In an interesting linguistic correspondence, the cave's name also signifies its nature. "Machpela," with its root form, "kephel," means "dual" or "double." On the surface, this refers to the two-tiered physical structure of the cave but if we look at its function, we find another meaning.

The above list of residents -- excluding Eisav, -- are couples. Here's that interesting correspondence. Through either luck or the evolution of our languages, the Hebrew word, "kephel," seems like a both a synonym and near homonym for "couple," meaning two of something. Perhaps it is the same word, somehow managing to work its way into both languages.

So the Ma-arat Hamachpela is not only the two-tiered cave but the Cave of the Couples.

And it doesn't stop there. In fact, there is a third way in which this cave has a dual nature. In Yiddishkeit, three is a "chazaka," or a form of strong confirmation.

The two-tiers of the Cave, are not merely physical, according to Chazal, ("Chachmenu" -- our sages -- "Zichronam" -- may their memory -- "Livracha" -- be a blessing). They are spiritual.

In fact, according to our sages, the Ma-arat Hamachpela was the gateway between two worlds, ours as we know it, and "Olam Haba" -- the World To Come, i.e. the world of eternal spiritual splendour which transcends and dwarfs our world of the five senses and temporal reality.

Our sages were very clear about this world we live in as humans -- called "Olam Hazeh" -- in the Talmud. They called our life on Earth a "Prozdor," a vestibule, a promontory entrance to our main house which is the infinite and eternal reality called the "afterlife." It is in the eternal afterlife that ultimate truth pertains, and the life of the spirit reveals itself in all its glory.

Thus, the Ma-arat Hamachpela was the actual doorway connecting the vestibule of this life to the main house beyond. It's dual nature was to connect to both worlds.

And, here's the mussar, i.e., what lesson we should learn from all this in order to improve our understanding and behaviour: think twice, and it's alright (sorry, Bob).

Think about who's in the Two-Tiered Cave, and why they are there, Eisav notwithstanding. Eisav is clearly the anomaly, and the presence of his severed head inside begs for insight that I don't have except to note that by being Yitzchak's first born, he originally did have the right to be buried there.

Maybe that's the explanation: that Eisav had the birthright to be buried in the Ma-arat Hamachpela is recognized by the presence of his head there. That he relinquished the right to be there whole in body and with a spouse, is, as they say, the rest of the story.

The rest of the story is the lesson for us to learn. Who was worthy, after all, of resting in a spot which, in addition to being a cave containing mortal remains, was the portal to Paradise? One exception must be mentioned, and she is Rachel. Rachel, Yaakov's chosen wife, was a Tzadekess worthy of burial in the Ma-arat HaMachpela but G-d had other plans for her. Her tomb near Beth Lechem has served as a source of spiritual support to Jews for thousands of years through exiles and tribulations, and as an inspiration even when there are -- Baruch Hashem -- no tribulations.

But those who were buried in the Cave had something we would all do well to emulate. They themselves were similar to the Cave, i.e., they mirrored its great and unique qualities in their beings, and in the lives they led.

Of all the geographic locations in the world, the Ma-arat HaMachpela exemplifies the dual nature of the life we are born into. On the one side, is our earthly existence, on the other side is the transcendent life of the spirit in a realm far closer to the whole of reality, and G-d.

Thus, as we journey through life, will we be oblivious to the testament of the Torah, and -- chas v'shalom -- ignore the life beyond the world we can see, or will we approach the heights of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs who discovered and maintained a constant awareness of G-d in their daily lives, i.e. who understood the dual nature of reality.

I recently overheard a sad comment on this when I had occasion to be in a school which provided a "Jewish" education. I'm not faulting the quality of the education the school provided but it saddened me when I heard one young lady saying to her friend -- perhaps when she saw me wearing a kippah -- "Oh, yeah, my zaidy used to keep kosher."

Clearly the school did not impress upon its students the truth of the Torah. It didn't lead them to understand that there is indeed a dual nature to life, that life is more than we can just touch, see, hear and feel but there is a realm of truth beyond that, with G-d sitting at the top, on the eighth floor, above the Seven Heavens, and that G-d is real, and he means it when he says in the Torah that Jews should keep kosher. Apparently, this school taught that -- chas v'shalom -- G-d did not mean it. Why anyone would believe that G-d would say such a thing, and not mean it, is, of course, more than a bit of a puzzle to me.

Thus we may understand how these couples came to be worthy to be buried in the Cave of the Connection to Olam Haba, and thus, they stand as shining examples to all of us to try to emulate.

The unusual circumstances of Sarah's death, in fact, show how devoutly our blessed ancestors applied the practice of awareness of G-d while in the world.

Toledot: Rivka the Grifter & Wild West Hero

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I wasn't always shomer Shabbos (a keeper of the Sabbath in accordance with halacha, Jewish law).

"Don't say that!" say the FFBs (people who are Frum -- religiously observant -- From Birth). "You're not allowed to embarrass yourself." And I can't decide whether they're well-meaning or just indulging in a subtle from of self-praise.

Hey. I'm not embarrassed. I am a Bal Tshuva, someone who has either come or returned to Jewish observance later in life. And, although she was not a Balat Tshuva herself, our Matriarch Rivka (Rebecca) is my Guiding Light (the soap opera notwithstanding), and role model in this regard.

I know that the Rabbis have said one must not throw someone's past in their face, i.e. to point out that they weren't always religious or, in the case of a convert, that they were not actually of the Jewish faith. But, in my opinion, the Rabbis have gone farther than needed on this issue, indeed, too far.

While it may be wrong to demean a person by referring to their background, the sin is in the attempt to demean the person, not specifically in alluding to their background. It's a sin to demean anyone, for any reason.

The rule should be similar to lashon hora (evil speech behind someone's back). The principle should simply be: Never attempt to wound anyone with your tongue.

If a person is not as tall as the average, you can't point to their stature and make fun of them for being shorter than most. If a person's skin colour is different than most, you can't demean them because of it.

Yet these things are inescapably obvious. The "short" person or the person with a skin of another colour cannot hide these facts about themselves. In our sensitivity, we must not allude in any negative way to these facts but the facts announce themselves, and are known. There is no concealing them even if we do not allude to them.

The problem is, if we avoid referring to these traits at all -- even in a benign way -- we are assuming that the person is ashamed of their condition, and we are quite possibly contributing to any shame they may feel. By treating the topic as taboo, we may thus be stigmatizing the person, and, paradoxically, contrary to our intentions, making them feel bad about themselves.

We, in fact, are making a judgement of them that they are deficient, and don't want this deficiency alluded to. Also, we may be assuming they have already suffered abuse from others about this deficiency, thus failing to give society the benefit of the doubt. And we are assuming that they have doubts about themselves because of their situations -- which are, actually, perfectly natural.

Why should a person be embarrassed about what they are naturally? They really shouldn't, but if a person is black, and people around him avoid any reference to black people on purpose, the person will pick up on it, and they'll feel self-conscious.

Likewise, if in reading a Ketuba (wedding contract) during the marriage ceremony, we skip over the part where the father of a convert is listed on the contract as "Avraham Avinu," which means "Abraham the Father of All of Us," rather than a specific Jewish father, and just say "Avraham," as if the person was born Jewish and his Jewish father's real name was Abraham, we are sending a message to that person, and to society that they are deficient in their origin.

With Balei Tshuva or converts, why should we assume there's any busha (embarrassment) about where they started out? The fact that someone came to be observant in the Jewish faith from "somewhere else" can just as easily be viewed as badge of honour, rather than a liability.

What are children taught about the author of the Targum (translation into Aramaic)of the Torah whose name was Onkelos? That he was a convert, of course. And when we say it, it's with great respect for the man who actually chose to be Jewish, unlike most of us. If it was an embarrassment to point out his status as a convert, teachers wouldn't teach it, and commentaries wouldn't feature it.

So I clearly disagree with the concept that one must hide one's past, and it is my opinion that we already know this from the Torah itself, as taught by the story of Rivka, the wife of Yitzchak (Isaac), and the mother of Jacob and Esau (Yaakov and Eisav). She's my role model.

Why?

Rivka, of all the personages in the Torah, stands tallest, in my view, in the measures of honesty, pragmatism, love of G-d, and completeness as a human being.

This, after all, is one formidable woman. This is a woman who takes no prisoners, and who is nobody's fool. This is a woman who knows what G-d wants, is a fearless Tzaddekes (righteous woman), and who is a well-schooled -- and gifted, -- grifter, or con artist, and quite possibly, in a subtle way, the prototype for Annie Oakley (a heroine of Westerns).

Not sounding like the Rivka everyone knows and loves?

The usual "book" on Rivka, the wife of Yitzchak (Isaac), emphasises her saintly qualities. As a young girl, she not only gives Abraham's envoy, Eliezer, water but also brings water for his camels, and she shows him respect by calling him "Master." What a good, caring, respectful young lady. Forgotten, as some would like Bal Tshuvas to do with their prior life before becoming observant, is the den of thieves on the very wrong side of the moral tracks from which she came. Of course, most Bal Tshuvas do not come from dens of thieves but they are sometimes encouraged to forget their prior lives, possibly so they will not have to bear the shame of not being "perfect" from the outset.

Rivka remembers where she came from, though, and she has no compunction at all about showing it. When it looks like her husband Yitzchak is getting ready to confer the Big Blessing on her firstborn but ne'er-do-well son, Eisav (Esau), she says to her good son Yaakov (Jacob), "Let us deceive your father into thinking you are Eisav [they were twins, and their father was clinically blind], and if there are bad consequences, let them fall on me." Is this just the act of an heroically selfless woman, who doesn't really know what she's doing? Or is there something going on here that we tend to miss year after year in reading this section of the Torah?

When we read the story of Rivka, we tend to assume that it's her wisdom and goodness which enable her to perpetrate this truly Earth-shaking fraud on her husband (note how he trembles greatly when he realizes there's been a switcheroo). We never question where she gets such a diabolically clever idea, then plans it, and executes it in dazzling detail.

First, she puts wool on Yaakov's arm so when Yitzchack reaches out to touch him, his arm will seem hairy, like Eisav's. This is quite possibly the origin of the phrase "to pull the wool over someone's eyes." Then she dresses Yaakov in Adam's Garden of Eden jacket that Eisav killed King Nimrod for and which had the beautiful scent of the outdoors radiating from it. She also cooks venison for Yitzchak just the way he likes it, and would expect it from Eisav.

A very elaborate deception it was. Could any good and wise person have done such a thing? I think not. What Rivka did, if we look with fresh eyes, took a lot of nerve, and imagination, but most importantly, savvy. She had to have some experience with this kind of thing.

In my view, we adopt a "don't ask" policy about her actions because we don't want to acknowledge who she really is. It is uncomfortable for us to admit that she's really her father's daughter, her dad Bethuel along with her brother Lavan being the pre-eminent con artists, thieves -- and worse -- in the region, and that you can take the girl out of her family of grifters but you can't take the grifter out of the girl. We only want to see a one-dimensional goody-goody saint. Rivka is a much more complete person than that. She's got game.

The kind of monumental deception she perpetrates on her husband comes easily to Rivka because it is part of who she is. This is the leopard showing its spots, the apple not falling far from the tree, the truth coming out, both nature and nurture asserting themselves. This is real life.

Yes, Rivka was a Tzaddekes. But was she herself more like Yaakov, her perfect son who sat learning all day or like Eisav, her handsome devil of a firstborn son?

The Torah makes it perfectly clear that Rivka was more like Eisav than Yaacov, and that Eisav was like Rivka. Hard as this is to accept, the evidence is there right in the Written Torah for us all to read.

How? One of the rules for interpreting the Torah -- and this is a continuing theme in my blogs because I seem to have an eye/ear for this sort of thing -- is that when similar uniquely striking words or phrases occur, they are meant to be connected, and a relationship inferred between the people or circumstances involved. Similitude ultimately invites comparison but first alludes to the actual likeness between the parties or situations in question.

Thus we see, right from the opening psukim (sentences) of this Parsha, the tell-tale hints in the Torah shockingly connecting Rivka with Eisav. As the late, great entertainer Danny Thomas, a"h, used to say, "Holy Toledo!" Toledo, of course, being an American town named after the original town in Spain, founded, according to an old Spanish tradition, by Jewish residents around 540 BCE who named it with the dual-purpose word used for both offspring and deeds often found in the Torah -- which also happens to be the title of this Parsha -- Toldot. You won't, however, find this on the web site for the city, Go-Toledo.com which propounds an alternative theory, that the word comes from "Tollitum," meaning "raised aloft"because the city was on a hill. The only problem with that is, "tollitum" is a latin word, the Romans coming around 193 BCE by which time the city was known as Toledo for nearly 400 years. Perhaps the latin word "tollitum" actually comes from the city's name, Toledot, to describe something raised high, as was the city. But I digress ...

So, how do we know that Rivka is more like her roguish, charming, rough and tumble son, Eisav, than her good, quiet son, Yaacov?

The Torah tells us Rivka has been barren for the first twenty years of her marriage to Yitzchak, and he constantly prays to G-d for a child. G-d finally answers Yitzchak's prayers, and Rivka becomes pregnant. It is, however, no routine pregancy. Not knowing that she has twins who are already at war inside her womb, Rivka feels a terrible tumult inside of herself, and cannot settle down. Her pains are so great that she says, "Im kayn, lama zeh anochi," and seeks out the wise men of her day for help.

There are ways to translate Rivka's statement to make it seem innocuous, i.e., "Why am I like this?" but the main opinion in the Midrash is that she's saying "If this is pregnancy, what do I need it for? I wish I had not gotten pregnant."

Here, the Midrash says, she lost her right to be the direct mother of the twelve tribes, an honour which then fell to her two nieces and daughters-in-law, Rachel and Leah, and the women in their households, although I'm at a loss to explain how Yaakov's brothers could then be known as the Children of Israel (Yaakov's later name as conferred by Hashem). Maybe the Brothers of Israel? Further analysis is needed on this drash but not in this blog.

The salient feature here, is that Rivka, as opposed to being a namby-pamby, goody-goody, helpless victim, speaks her mind, and does not sugar-coat the situation. She speaks frankly and openly about her having doubts about her pregnancy; she is human and in pain, and is forthright to say so.

They say that, later on in the Torah, when Joseph's brothers hate him for [unintentionally but irresponsibly] telling false tales about them to their father, "Lo yachlu l'dabro l'shalom," they couldn't even bring themselves to be civil towards him. In this, they were righteous, says the Midrash because they did not fake being civil when they could not feel like it; they let the truth of their feelings prevail. And they were right to do so.

So Rivka is strong and forthright. Is this what we are to learn from her cri-de-coeur? Yes, but there's more. There's her connection to Eisav.

A mere ten psukim later, a very interesting linguistic coincidence occurs. In the space of these ten psukim, the boys are born -- Eisav first -- by a hair -- or two, -- and growing up. Yaakov, who got his name by holding on to the ankle ("ekev") of his brother as they were born, has never reconciled himself to being second banana, and gets an opportunity to redress this error.

It is the time of Abraham's funeral. Mercifully, G-d has taken Abraham at the age of one hundred and seventy five, rather than at his full allotment of years, one hundred and eighty, in order to spare him the pain of seeing how his so-far seemingly exemplary grandson, Eisav, will turn out.

About Eisav there is a tradition that he indeed should have been the firstborn because he was so handsome and gifted, and that had he chosen to be righteous, he would have been a force for good in the world the likes of which are rarely, if ever, seen.

But he didn't. He enjoyed mayhem, to put it mildly. And true to his maternal roots, the masters of mayhem and trickery, his maternal grandfather Betuel, and his uncle Lavan, he conned almost all those around him into believing that he was a good boy. Except, of course, for his mother, Rivka. No fool, she; you can't kid a kidder.

On the day of Abraham's funeral, Yaakov was cooking lentils. He did so as part of the practice of comforting the mourners, specifically, his father, Yitzchak. Lentils are round, and, like the egg given to the immediately bereaved to eat when they come home from a funeral, and, as often eaten at the Passover seder, round foods are presented to us to assure us that, though we may be grieving, things eventually will turn around, like a wheel, and that trouble, grief and suffering are only the downside of life which has an eventual upswing automatically built into it. In our time of grief, we take a little comfort, and have faith that much of the pain will subside, that there is hope, and a light at the end of the tunnel -- unless, as is usually the case with me after I've entered deeply into a tunnel, the light at the end is that of a monstrously huge train approaching at breakneck speed ...

Into this scene of Yaakov cooking lentils, straggles Eisav, all tired out from a day -- like most others --of creating mayhem, even as others, unlike him, have paused to mourn the passing of a Prince of G-d, his grandfather, Abraham. Eisav sees what's cooking, and he cries out to Yaakov, "Give me some of that red, red stuff!" This is how his dominion came to be known as "Edom," a variation on the word he used, "adom," which means "red".

Yaakov sees an opportunity, and says to Eisav, "Sell me your birthright" as a condition for him doling out any of the lentil stew.

At this moment in the story, it would be prudent to point out that Yaakov's motives were never selfish. Although there are other traditions which vary from this [two Jews, ten opinions], we'll go with this one: Yaakov knew from his studying of G-d's ways that the firstborn of Yitzchak would be the bearer of the Torah, and the "ritual director" of G-d's service. He, like his mother Rivka, knew only too well Eisav's penchant for evil, and in seeking to secure the birthright, Yaakov was trying to protect the holiness of the Torah and G-d's services from the defilement to which Eisav and his descendants would surely have subjected them.

This is borne out by Eisav's response. Did Eisav say, "Are you kidding? Do you think I am going to give up the right to represent the holy Torah and G-d's services for a mess of lentil pottage?
Surely, you jest, dear brother, my junior by those few crucial, and thank G-d, divinely ordained seconds! I'll make myself an egg salad sandwich. Nice try, but no sale, Yankele!"

Alas for Eisav, this was not his response. His response was, "Hine anochi holech lamut, v'lama zeh li hab'chora,"i.e., "Here I am, marching towards death; for what do I need the birthright of the firstborn?"

On the surface level, Eisav has focused on his physical pain, his hunger and exhaustion, and incredibly, has valued short-term relief of his temporary predicament over the long-term implications of the right of primogeniture. Alternatively, he knew he was unfit to conduct the rituals of service to G-d, and would have died from performing them improperly, or, as a hunter, he knew the risks of the wild might cut his life short, as would, I presume, his penchant for warfare. In other words, he didn't think he was a good fit for it, anyway.

But there is something truly crucial in the way he said it.

When Eisav says, "Lama zeh li b'chorah," or "What do I need the birthright for?" it unquestionably echoes the words spoken by his mother a few sentences earlier regarding her painful pregnancy with him and Yaakov, "Lama zeh anochi?" or "What do I need this for?"

Thus, in a few quick strokes, the Torah establishes a connection and similarity between the personalities and outlooks of mother Rivka, and her son Eisav. They think alike. They are alike.

Indeed, in these same psukim, the Torah tells us that Eisav is his father Yitzchak's favourite, "ki tzayid b'pheev," because Eisav was a hunter and "prey was in his mouth." Eisav is described as "Ish yodaya tzayid, ish sadeh," a man who knows how to hunt, a man of the fields. We must remember that Yitzchak was a lover of the outdoors. When he met his wife to be, he was in a field, praying, communing with G-d in the great temple of Nature. There the Torah says that Yitzchak went out "lasuach ba'sadeh," to pray in the fields. The echo of the word, "sadeh," "fields," Eisav being called an "ish sadeh" by the Torah, shows the affinity between the two.

The sages, however, tell us there is a subtle additional meaning to the passuk (sentence) in the Torah describing why Yitzchak liked Eisav. The phrase that Yitchak liked Eisav "ki tzayid b'pheev," is interpreted by commentators to mean not that Eisav had the prey of the hunt with him but that his father Yitzchak was the prey, i.e., that Yitchak had fallen prey to Eisav's gifted deceptions in portraying himself as a model son. In other words, Eisav was such a good con artist that he had his father wrapped around his little finger.

Are we seeing more similiarities now between Eisav and his Mom? Neither is afraid to speak their mind, both are willing to question whether something important they have is actually worth the pain, both are excellent deceivers, and clearly, both are eminently capable of carrying out their deceptions.

Yaakov, though equally intelligent -- and strong -- didn't really inherit the guile from his mother's side of the family. With his sincere desire for learning (sitting in tents), he may have
seemed a little distant from his father, who loved the outdoors like Eisav.

And now that we see how much more of Rivka's personality Eisav mirrored, is it any wonder that Yitzchak preferred Eisav to Yaakov? Eisav was a man after Yitzchak's heart regarding the outdoors but with his Torah-noted similarity in personality, aptitude, and temperament to Rivka, Eisav was a shoo-in. He not only reminded Yitzchak of himself, he reminded him of Rivka! Eisav had the vibe that reminded Yitchak of his beloved wife. Conversely, it becomes obvious, now, that the reason Rivka loved Yaakov was because, being without guile, he reminded her of who else but her husband, Yitzchak, who was so without guile his wife managed to trick him not once, but twice. We may infer, therefore, that Rivka, like Eisav, also had Yitzchak wrapped around her little finger, and, in fact, we see more proof of this with her second con at the end of the Parsha.

After helping her son Yaakov deceive her husband Yitzchak into giving him the Big Blessing, utilizing all her grifter skills, including cooking Yitzchak a meal just the way Eisav would have -- Rivka hears that Eisav will try to kill Yaakov.

She needs Yaakov to "get out of Dodge" but she doesn't want him to just run away. She wants him to go away with her husband's blessing. So, being the ever resourceful grifter she is, she sets up another con.

Rivka goes to Yitzchak with a made-up story that she can't stand the local girls as potential wives for Yaakov. "Katzti b'chayai mipnei b'not Chait," she lies barefacedly, "I am exasperated
by the daughters of Chait." And then she uses her favourite word, "If Yaakov takes one of them as a wife," "lama li chayim," "what do I need my life for?"

Rivka is always saying this. She earlier tells Yaakov that if he doesn't leave, he and Eisav will probably kill each other, and "lama," why, should she lose them both on the same day?

This constantly asking the semi-rhetorical question "lama," or "what good is this?" shows that Rivka is a thinking person who consciously evaluates all the situations she finds herself in. The "what's in it for me," attitude is surely from her family background, her father and brother always looking to score in any given situation.

Her final con in Parsha Toldot succeeds, as so it should, coming from such a talented grifter as Rivka. Yitzchak, not suspecting any subterfuge, swallows it hook, line, and sinker, and orders Yaakov to get out of town and to find a bride (oy vey, but it worked out OK) by Lavan's family. And, naturally, he deems it proper to give Yaakov yet another blessing as he sends him on his way. So Rivka has saved her sons from killing each other, and has secured an additional blessing for her favourite, designated heir to the Torah by, once again, conning her husband.

Now that we've established where Rivka is coming from, what can we learn from it all?

The moral of this story, as I see it, is: don't deny your background. Wherever G-d plants us has a purpose, and we should be careful not to try to forget it, to put it behind us or to put on airs, even as we are trying to better ourselves. Rivka never forgot where she came from, and she did not try to change herself; she remained who she was. In fact, if Rivka had cut herself off from her upbringing, and tried to deny or forget it, she would have been in conflict with herself to the extent that she would not have had the nerve -- the confidence -- to bring about the important changes that she did.

So, interestingly, G-d needed Rivka to be the grifter that she was. Likely, it was Hashgacha Proteus, Divine Providence. And this is the lesson for us. If you come from a family of thieves, do not reject your background, and don't try to deny it. Retain what you learned, and use it for a G-dly purpose.

This, of course, is the difference between Rivka and her son Eisav, notwithstanding their kinship. As demonstrated by her solicitousness to Eliezer as a young girl still at home, Rivka shows that there is a higher nature than one's genetic nature which can also supersede the environmental nurturing a person experiences. Her selflessness belies her upbringing. Yet, the nature/nurture a person receives as a child does inform their beings. In tricking her husband twice, Rivka performed a form of spiritual alchemy. She used the guile she inherited and learned at home, "le shaym shamayim," for a G-dly, not a selfish, purpose. And, since Rivka's talents were "beyond the law," she qualifies as the first Wild West Hero, as found in the movies, where the Hero fulfills our desire to go beyond the confines of civilized behaviour by using outlaw skills (usually gunfire) to protect society.

Thus should we all honour our backgrounds, never be ashamed of them, and embrace them, for they are what G-d gave us in order to do our work in the world. It is up to us to make sure that the work we do is for the good.

Or lama --why, indeed,-- are we here?

P.S.
For those of you who are not afraid of a little "university learning," here's a broader exposition of the concept of the Hero.

I was going to end this commentary with the above line when a little birdie told me to remember my own background -- that of studying film, among other things. Upon doing so, I realized that Rivka may be the the first example of the heroic archetype prevalent in the genre of movies called Westerns, i.e., Horse Operas, Oaters, etc which I would say has morphed into the good old James Bond spy stories as well as many crime and adventure thrillers, even violence genres like the Terminator.

Sociologists who have studied film have come up with a formula for understanding those Wild West action stories, and the hero type seems to fit Rivka to a T. She may, in fact, be the Annie Oakley of the Torah. Or, rather, Annie Oakley might be the Rivka of the Western.

Here's how the formula works. The decent, law-abiding citizens of the frontier town have decided that, if they're going to be civilized, they have to give up carrying guns in the town.
Only the Sheriff, and his Deputies, can still pack heat.

Of course, the Outlaws, by definition, don't give a hoot for the law, and they come in and menace all the nice townfolk by riding in and shooting things up, robbing banks, killing people etc.

Now, hear this: the Sheriff and his Deputies -- unless they are the Heroes of the story -- can't handle the Outlaws because the latter are too wild and resourceful to be caught easily. And even if they were caught, their buddies can break them out of jail. The Law, then, can't completely control the Outlaws, unless, as I've noted, the representatives of the Law are the Heroes.

According to the sociologists, these groups of people represent major parts of the inner psyche of each and every one of us in society. The nice townfolk represent the limitations we put on ourselves in order to live peacably in society, i.e. by being law-abiding, by eschewing violence, and by having designated representatives of the Law protecting us. Gone from the civilized -- read, tamed -- members of society is all the wildness and abandon we supposedly still have within ourselves but which we have repressed in order to be civilized. And so, all of the urges and drives we have suppressed in order to live in society show up in the Western as -- who else? -- the Outlaws.

The Outlaws -- as their name suggests -- live beyond the restrictions of the law. They represent our desire to be free of the restrictions we place upon ourselves. They represent a primal urge to be wild and carefree. But of course, we dare not be that way, because we know we do not want to indiscriminately kill other people or create chaos in our world.

Enter the Hero, who saves the day. The Hero -- think James Bond in the spy version of the Western formula -- represents the Law -- and then some. The unique characteristic of the Hero is that he has all of the skills of mayhem that the Outlaws have but uses them in the service of the Law. Thus, James Bond upholds his country but he also has what is clearly an Outlaw function -- the willingness and ability to kill, as well as the finely honed outlaw skills he needs to carry out his mission.

In the Hero we see a fusion of our desire to be free of restrictions and yet a desire to remain civilized. The Hero fulfills that ideal for us, and we identify with him or her. The Hero gets to shoot guns in a non-packing society, and is exempted from keeping the laws of society, sometimes, as long as nobody innocent gets hurt.

So, Rivka was the first Wild West Hero. She was a Tzaddekes, a saintly woman who clearly upheld G-d's ways but like the Heroic character in the Western formula, she was allowed the licence to use Outlaw tactics which she had acquired through her birth and early upbringing, in order to save society, our society, the Children of Israel.

Aisav the deceiver is defeated by his own mother's equally expert deception. Good triumphs over Evil, giving it a taste of its own medicine, and we, by secretly identifying with Rivka's bold subterfuge, get a taste of being heroes, ourselves. Baruch Hashem, what a Torah G-d gave us! Maybe it should be learned while we munch on popcorn and gulp down large sized drinks!

Bamidbar: G-d Is Not Enough

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The Torah's book of Bamidbar, which literally means "In the Desert," and which is known to English Bible readers as "The Book of Numbers," deals, as one would expect, with much of the history and practices of the Children of Israel as they sojourned through the desert. I have characterized this period in my previous blog entry as idyllic because there was nothing else for people to do but to relax and enjoy learning the ways of G-d from Moses and the Elders, and to bask in the spirit of G-d emanating from the Tabernacle, a Yeshiva which every Jew today would love to have attended.

The Generation of the Desert enjoyed freedom from all worldly cares like finding food, making a living, i.e., engaging in any form of business, trade, agriculture or hunting. Nobody had to pick out schools or worry about paying high tuition fees for their children, nor did they have big bills of any kind to pay, and, as I previously noted, they could breathe a proverbial, collective sigh of relief that they were off the hook for conquering the Promised Land, having shown a distinct lack of nerve on this issue in response to the report of the spies.

As enviable a situation as this was, things did happen, and when the Torah chooses from all of the things that happened to record some of them, we are to sit up and take notice, for everything in the Torah is there for us to learn from.

Through numerous incidents, three dramatically drawn personalities, and one seemingly routine set of instructions, the Torah teaches us in the book of Bamidbar, -- if we're at all attuned, -- an important principle, one that might seem very unlikely at first blush, but there it is:

G-d -- and Mashiach -- are -- sadly -- not enough. They are not the answer to everything.

Of course, many of us think Hashem is the answer to everything, and I would agree that, under the right circumstances, that, yes, He is. But many of us are waiting for Mashiach (The Messiah) to come to solve all our problems. Many of us are in pain; many of us are suffering individually, and we continue to suffer as a people. Surely, on that great day when Mashiach comes, we fervently pray, our pain will cease.

The Torah,in these chapters, tells us clearly that this is not likely to be the case.

If I have any purpose at all, it's to point out lessons from the Torah that many of us miss when we read it through -- even study the commentaries in depth -- because we often don't put two and two together.

This blog entry -- when G-d lets me finish it -- will have shown some cherished notions to be actually slightly askew. For instance, what is the real purpose of the mitzvahs, the body of commandments which are given in great detail in the Torah, and how do they tie in with the notion of Mashiach, and G-d Himself?

OK. How do we know G-d and Mashiach are not enough? There are numerous ways the Torah teaches us this but let's take the most blatantly obvious example.

The Generation of the Desert, had both Hashem and his Mashiach, Moses, dwelling amongst them. So what did they do? They rebelled; they complained; they fornicated right in front of Moses. Zimri, the leader of the tribe of Shimon, had relations right out in the open with a Midianite Princess named Cozby, just as other members of his tribe were cohabiting with other Midianite women, and in return for sexual favours, worshipping their idols!

Hello.

Something's going on here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? (Bob Dylan).

How could they do this? In the presence of the Holy Shechinah dwelling in the Tabernacle, in Hebrew, "Mishkan," which actually means "dwelling" and has the root of the word "neighbour" in it, a merit which G-d had granted the people, as well as literally in the face of Mashiach, G-d's human representative on Earth, Moses, they were doing this?

Moses was struck speechless. He just stood there, and cried.

If G-d Himself and Mashiach were sufficient, would this scenario have happened at all?

When -- iyh -- I have the energy, this entry will also deal with the purpose of the mitzvot -- the body of all the commandments -- being quite different than what we might think, as shown to us by the narrative involving the dramatis personae of Korach, Bilam and Pinchas.

to be continued

Does G-d Answer Prayers?

9999-12-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

With the recent High Holiday season came questions. All that praying. All that supplicating.

Someone asked the question. Does G-d really answer prayers?

We all know the standard responses. Yes G-d answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is "no," for reasons known only to the Heavenly courts above -- but we can be sure that a "no" answer must be the right one because G-d is All Merciful and does what is ultimately best for us -- even if it does not seem so to us at the time.

To this I would like to add my own two cents, and hereby introduce the Gord Lindsay Paradigm of Prayer.

What on Earth does that mean?

It means that when we define G-d answering our prayers as us getting what we asked for, I think we are asking the wrong question, i.e. using the wrong paradigm.

What is this thing called a paradigm? It's a standardized way we use for looking at a given situation.

When a friend or relative falls gravely ill, and we fervently petition G-d to heal them, and then they die; when we feel a deep need for something in our lives, and we fervently pray to G-d to grant it to us, and it never materializes, we may indeed feel that G-d has not answered our prayers.

As indicated above, however, we do have the option of saying, "Well, G-d did answer our prayers, and the answer was 'no;' it's for our own good that we didn't get what we wanted," but that can ring fairly hollow in the face of major disappointment, and worse, it can discourage one's faith in the efficacy and benefits of prayer. Maybe next time, we won't even bother to pray for something, since prayer doesn't seem to "work," i.e. it fails to achieve the result we desire.

This is why I advocate a "paradigm shift," and offer a new way to look at the question.

In my view, when we pray fervently for a particular result or benefit, we should not assess our results by whether or not we got what we wanted. We should, instead, ask the question in a slightly different way. We should ask: "Did it do any good?"

"My loved one went into Intensive Care in the hospital, and we prayed and prayed and prayed for them."

"Did it do any good?"

If we ask this much more open question, we have a better chance of arriving at the whole truth, instead of a limiting section of it.

"Did it do any good?" might, in fact, initially be taken to mean,"Did it achieve the desired result?" but these few, simple words, can mean volumes more.

Our sages teach us that we have a daily obligation to pray. In Hebrew, this is called the mitzvah (commandment) of tefillah (prayer). Our current siddur, the book of prayers and services as formulated by the scribe Ezra and the Men of the Great Assembly, contains three daily prayer services for morning, afternoon and night during the work week, plus services for the Sabbath and Holidays.

It's enough to keep a Jew praying. Our siddur, therefore, helps us fulfill the obligation/mitzvah of prayer.

Strangely, though, the sages also tell us that there were, and are, other ways we can fulfil our obligation of prayer -- especially in exigent situations.

In fact, what did Jews do before there was a siddur with all the prayers printed out?
The word "siddur" actually means "order," just like the word "Seder" describes a special order to be followed during the first night of Passover.

Ezra formulated the siddur after the return from the first Exile because the returnees had lost a lot of their Jewishness and devotion to G-d in their years of exile. They didn't know how to pray, so he wrote it all out.

Before the exile, however, before there were any books written or printed out, what did people do?

Just how did the individual pray? (to be continued ....)(Sarah)

Vayishlach and Chanukah

9999-12-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

Parsha Vayishlach is always read around the time of Chanukah, and the Torah always has overt or veiled connections to the cycle of worldly events, especially established holidays, so what might be the connection between this holiday and the Torah?

Before I give my opinion on this, let me show how the Torah -- containing myriad secrets and allusions to things that have come to pass, as well as things that we don't know about yet -- made me smile in recognition of its prescience a few years ago.

In the dying days of open war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the leader of the regime being ousted, was not to be found. Speculation was that he had eluded capture by somehow slipping across the border into Syria. A huge manhunt was under way which went on for a while. Noone knew if he would be found.

Suddenly word went out that he had, indeed, been found, hiding in a hole in the ground. Coalition forces extracted him, and put him in jail.

Right around the time when Hussein was found -- and I mean within a day or two, -- we were reading the beginning of Parsha Miketz at the Shabbat afternoon mincha service.

The beginning of that Parsha deals with Pharaoh having his dreams, and hearing that a prisoner, Joseph, could interpret them, he orders that Joseph be released from prison.

Amazingly, the words at the end of this section blinked brightly at me when I read them, and I knew the Torah was enjoying a little subtle prophecy in a veiled reference to the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The words used in the Torah when they went to get Joseph to bring him to Pharaoh were "vayiritzuhu min ha-bor," or " they pulled him out of the pit." The Torah did not have to use this word, "bor" which literally means "hole." Rashi, the premier commentator on the Torah, says that the word "bor" always means "a hole," but in this case, the "hole" is prison.

The Torah could have used the term "beit sohar," the specific term for jail but instead used this curious word "bor," and I think I know why.

The Torah, like G-d, is eternal and present at all times. I think it was winking at us, telling us it knew when and where Saddam Hussein would be found. Right at the time this section of Torah came up for study in the yearly cycle, Saddam Hussein was captured, and you could use the exact same expression to describe his capture, word for word from the Torah, as was described for taking Joseph out of jail, "vayiritzuhu min ha-bor," "and they pulled him out of a hole."

As far as the connection of Vayishlach to Chanukah, it involves brutality to women, and the unfortunate lack of wisdom on the part of otherwise brave and noble men in response. [to be continued]

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (the "Etc." part)

9999-12-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

REVISED JAN 19, 2009

Although this blog is basically a Torah commentary one, there is an "Etc." in its title, and what follows is going to be in the latter category, an interpretation of a Woody Allen film called Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

I had just been to a group viewing of this film where a discussion followed, led by an expert on film. My problem was that, IMHO, neither he nor apparently anyone else in the room understood the film, and I left with a sense of great frustration at being powerless to expound my theory of this movie in a manner more detailed than a brief comment which everyone felt free to ignore. If that sounds pompous, I'm sorry; it's just that movies are very complex when you really look at them, and there's often a lot to say.

However, I don't want to get into overly lengthy exposition, either, so, just for the record, I am going put down in very short form what I think this film is about.

In point of fact, this will be a revision of the previously existing blog on this topic because, as I often do, I've thought more about the movie, and, I think, have gained a more complete perspective on it. I'm still just sketching it out, though.

CLASS AMERICA: The Triumph of Affluence and Privilege over Lower Class Urges

The film is a fable -- told with a narrator, in story book manner -- of two privileged women who go through an odyssey in which -- as is reassuring to those of us children hearing the story who also want to grow up to live the American Dream -- they overcome weaknesses and doubts, and then carry on, wiser, stronger, and better in their rightful places as upper middle class affluents.

That they represent the affluent upper middle class life is pretty obvious. Vicky is studying Catalan art [?? forgive any spelling errors; I've not had the luxury to get involved academically with this pointedly esoteric pursuit], and Cristina, well, she's just drifting comfortably, trying to figure out what to do with her life, and, sure, a trip to Spain, that fills the bill. Her actual financial situation escapes me, right now, but the point is, she acts rich. The two of them remind me of the George Bernard Shaw character, John Tanner, in Man and Superman, who signed his name with the title abbreviation, "M.I.R.C." following, which stood for "Member of the Idle Rich Class."

But, dear children, pitfalls await in Barcelona which threaten to derail them from the life of comfort and privilege which is their birthright. Those pitfalls are the demons of this fairy tale -- artists, lovers, -- Europeans (!) -- who try to tempt our girls away from their rightful place, and drag them down into the maelstrom of things decidedly lower class, viz. passion, sex, down and dirty emotions, cynicism, doubts, free spiritism.

And, yes, agonizingly, they do succumb! Initially. Are they lost forever? Can it be? Ah, but -- to cut to the chase, -- let us remember that this is a fairy tale.

Just as monsters under the bed seem real to children, so do the infatuations experienced by Vicky and Cristina in Spain seem real to them, as they descend into this world of demons. Vicky is ready to dump her doting American upper middle class fiance because she has felt something with her demon lover of one night, Juan. She is now wracked with doubt, questioning her entire set of values. Cristina picks up the slack and moves right in with Juan.

Poor (!) Vicky and Cristina. They are like a child experiencing a terrible fever. It burns and rages within them, making them forget who they are. They descend into lower class Hell with Juan and his witch hag (though deceptively beautiful) ex-wife, Maria Elena.

Perhaps they have forgotten the goodness of their conventional lives because they have not yet been tested, and have not yet achieved that certain level of strength and maturity required. This, then, is their rite of passage.

Vicky especially is now estranged from her former life. She thinks it's a nightmare, empty, bereft of love and meaning, not suspecting that the real nightmare is her believing that her previous life was a nightmare. Sweet child, sweet angst.

Cristina is bewitched and held in a spell by the evil, fatalistic, hopeless, hapless, yet devilishly handsome and charming Juan and his hellishly manipulative, weird, suicidal, and threateningly beautiful and talented ex, Maria Elena, in a menage-a-trois which drags her down, captures her soul, as the two demons feed on her.

Ah, but dear children, don't worry. Fevers are self-limiting. They burn intensely, and then, having accomplished their task, they recede.

And so, after the fever and all the unlikely connections and dramas reach their peak, miraculously -- and, naturally, -- Vicky and Cristina spontaneously return to themselves.

As Vicky emphatically states about her suddenly former passion for Juan, "It's over." She says this convincingly, with force and finality, having attained the personal strength and growth her ordeal was designed for.

Cristina, too, having come to her senses, good girl, makes the conscious decision to leave her menage-a-trois with Juan and Maria Elena, leaving the wicked witches hissing and spitting vexedly at each other in the street, hapless and hopeless again, without their escaped victim to feed on.

And so while many who see the film may think that Vicky and Cristina end up personally where they started, nothing could be further from the truth. They have undergone an odyssey which has taken them through regions first of doubt, and then personal growth, an odyssey which has taken them to the next level, a life with less doubt, fewer monsters, and a greater strength and appreciation of normality. The circumstances they return to may be the same but they have changed internally. They have grown. They have been through the crucible of temptation and doubt, and they have emerged whole, and, thank goodness, are ready to rejoin the upper middle class.

The happy ending of the fairy tail is simply them returning to their stations in life, stations far more comfortable than the passion and pain of the artists they have left behind. Class will out, says Mr. Allen. It will trump passion and the lure of the streets. Vicky and Cristina may not have found new directions but they have returned to their senses, glad to be living a life that is far more stable and secure than to endure the uncertainty suffered by less fortunate human beings. Such is America, to the privileged. Welcome home, prodigal daughters, with your renewed allegiance to your rightful places. The temporary insanity is over. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

So, remember, boys and girls, the good life is never lost. When faced with doubts, remember Vicky and Cristina, and how they overcame, and sleep tight, for all is well.

The Chanukah Purim Connection in the Torah

9999-12-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

Around the time of the annual holiday of Chanukah, in December, we read the story of Joseph as we continue our annual march, week after week, through the parshyot (chapters) of the Torah.

Oddly enough, this part of the Torah, the story of how Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dreams and saves the entire region from famine, clearly -- and uncannily -- alludes to Purim, another Jewish festival coming up a couple of months after Chanukah.

That there is a link between Chanukah and Purim we all know from our siddur (prayer book). Every day, when we pray, we see the special section called "Al Hanisim," where we describe the miracles G-d did for us -- but we say this section only on Chanukah and Purim. Within this Al Hanisim section, each festival has its own paragraph describing the miracles done for us for that particular festival.

Chanukah, we know, was the re-dedication of the Holy Temple, after the Maccabees, a brave group of priests, became warriors, and ousted Assyrian rulers bent on preventing Jewish learning, worship and practice.

Purim is the story of how the entire population of Jews in the Persian empire were threatened with annihilation by the evil Haman, and how G-d pulled some strings behind some curtains, and created situations which through Mordechai and Esther, the heroes of the Purim story, the entire population of Jews was saved.

Jewish law indicates that there is to be greater physical enjoyment during Purim, involving eating, drinking, and sharing food and money because the physical survival of the Jewish people was at issue.

Chanukah was a more spiritual form of salvation because it meant re-establishing the services in the Holy Temple, and, therefore, does not require the kind of celebratory meal we are obliged to have on Purim to experience our salvation in a physical way.

And yet there is some peculiar evidence in scriptural writings which call this demarcation of types of joy into question.

Before the Holy Temple was built by Solomon, his father, King David, brought the Ark of the Covenant -- which would later be housed in the Holy of Holies in the Temple --to Jerusalem.

Before David's time as King, the Ark had briefly been captured by the Phillistines who were persuaded by their own advisers to give it back to the Jews after enduring a series of mini-plagues. Since its return, the Ark had been kept in Israel but it was David who brought it to Jerusalem.

Upon bringing this spiritual centre of Judaism to its rightful home, King David walked alongside the Ark as it was being transported back, and ... danced ecstatically like a madman, like a crazy fool, like someone who'd had more than a few too many.

His wife, Michal, the daughter of the previous king, Saul, berated David, saying his behaviour was unbecoming of a king of Israel -- to which David replied that this was why he was King of Israel, and Michal's father was not -- that he was the kind of king G-d preferred. (He later, I believe, apologized to her for saying such a hurtful thing).

What was David doing that occasioned his dancing? Exactly what the Maccabees did. Bringing the Holy Ark to its spiritual home, amongst the people. The Phillistines of an earlier day were like the Hellenists of the Maccabees' day. They both thought themselves superior to the G-d of the Ark of the Covenant. King David, although not engaged with the Phillistines at the time, was bringing the Ark home to the centre of Judaism.

Since in David's time, the physical survival of the people was not the issue, we must view this as a celebration of the spiritual side of Judaism. Unlike our current view of such distinctions, however, King David thought this was indeed an occasion for dancing with wild abandon -- the kind of behaviour we usually reserve for Purim -- and its physical form of salvation.

Then, there's the Torah itself. It's noodging us to remember Purim while we are celebrating Chanukah.

How? By drawing an uncanny collection of parallels between the story of Joseph and the story of Mordechai.

So while the calendar says it's time for Chanukah, the Torah says it's time for Purim.

How does Megillat Esther, the book of Purim end? By saying that after G-d arranged behind the scenes for Mordechai to save the Persian king Achashverosh' life, Mordechai was "mishneh le melech," second to the king.

Gee, that sounds a lot like Joseph in the Torah, no? After saving Pharaoh -- and everybody else -- because G-d helped him interpret Pharaoh's dream and to advise him how to avoid disaster -- what did Joseph become? Why, what a coincidence, he also became second to the King, as the new Viceroy of Egypt.

How was Mordechai's appointment announced? After he had worn sackcloth and ashes in a previous part of the history, he was given royal robes to wear, and sent on a parade through the people with much pomp and ceremony.

How was Joseph's appointment announced? After he had worn plain prison garb from the previous part of his history, Joseph was given royal robes to wear, and paraded through the people with much pomp and ceremony, in the "mishneh," the word we find to describe Mordechai in the last sentence of the Megillah, which is the same name explicitly given in the Torah for the royal chariot of ... the second in command.

You would be right to say that the above is more than enough evidence for us to infer that the Torah is telling us that the story of Joseph alludes to the story of Mordechai and Purim. The actions described are virtually identical.

And yet, the clincher, the evidence that seals the deal has not even been mentioned yet, and here it is:

What is the name Pharaoh gives Joseph in his new capacity of Viceroy?

"Tsaphnat Paney-ach."

And what might this mean? It means "The Revealer of Hidden Things," appropriately, for Joseph's dream interpretations.

But what does this remind us of?

"Megillat Esther," is nominally, the "Book of Esther" but what do the sources tell us the real meaning of "Megillat Esther" is?

They say it means "The Revealing" (Megilla = Giluy) of "Hidden Things" (Esther -- from Seter -- hidden, secret).

So G-d and the Torah are giving us a little noodge, here. Joseph's new name actually means the same as "Megillat Esther." How can we not, then, think of Purim, even if we're reading this in the Torah, during the time of Chanukah?

Now, then, what are we reading in the Torah when Purim comes around on the calendar?

Why, we're reading about the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the desert. And what does G-d say about that? "Ve-asu li Mikdash," a clear allusion to the Beit Ha Mikdash -- the Holy Temple -- which just happens to be what the Maccabees re-opened in the story of Chanukah.

Clearly, the Torah, in my view, as hinted at by the siddur, is telling us that Chanukah and Purim are one, and that while we are celebrating Chanukah, we should also be thinking of Purim, and, yes, celebrating more physcially and joyfully. And to remind us what the purpose of a Jew is, when we are celebrating joyfully on Purim, the Torah is telling us to remember the holiness and sacredness of the Holy Temple. In fact, if people were to remember the mystical, holy purpose of getting so drunk on Purim that one can no longer see a disctinction between "Blessed is Mordechai, and cursed is Haman," we would retain more respect for Hashem and our own lives while in the throes of our celebrating. We would, in essence, get drunk more responsibly, i.e. not with the giddy, careless abandon which can -- G-d forbid --lead to tragic accidents, but with the joy of communing with a higher holiness and purpose.

And what of the distinction between the two episodes in our history, that Chanukah was a spiritual salvation while Purim was the saving of the entire body of the Jewish people?

I think by alluding to the saving of our bodies when we celebrate the saving of our souls, and to the the saving of our souls when we celebrate the saving of our bodies, the Torah is telling us that body and soul must be one entity. The salvation of the soul and physical survival must always go hand in hand, in Judaism.

As it says in the Shema Yisrael prayer where we acknowledge that G-d is One, we are told to unify our own various elements, as well. "Love your G-d with all your heart, all your soul, and all your ways."

A Jew should have his body and soul together, both in service to Hashem. The uniqueness of Judaism is that we don't sacrifice one element for the other. We elevate and celebrate both -- in service of G-d. G-d saved us in different ways on
Chanukah and Purim but it was the same G-d and He wants us to know that He is One, and, as mysterious as it may seem to us who are composed of so many different elements, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, so are we.

Vayechi

9999-12-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

"Moshiach (the Messiah) will come, and everything will be alright."

"When we get out of 'golus' (exile), and go back to Israel, everything will be alright."

"May the Messiah come speedily."

"May he come and restore the hearts of children to their parents, and parents to their children."

On and on it goes, how everything is in such terrible shape, and the only remedy is for the Messiah to come. So many have put their personal satisfaction, even their lives, hopes and happiness on hold, praying for the coming redemption to come, already.

And yet, the story of our father Yaakov (Jacob), in this parsha (chapter of the Torah), Vayechi, actually teaches us something else again.

Yaakov is on his death bed giving final words to his sons (and two grandsons) who will head the tribes of Israel.

According to a Midrash, the Shechina (Divine Presence) rested upon him, and Yaakov saw the entire future of the Jewish people right up to the coming of the Messiah. He wanted to tell his heirs exactly when that day would come but when he tried to speak, the Shechina erased the knowledge from his head.

This was not the first time Yaakov had dealt with the exile we are currently in, the Roman exile, and since the Romans are said to have descended from Aisav (Esau), Yaakov's brother, it's really the exile under his brother's thumb.

When he was a young man, fleeing the wrath of Aisav, Yaakov had a famous dream, known as "Jacob's Ladder." He saw a ladder reaching into the heavens, and angels ascending and descending on it.

In his dream, he was told that the angels represented the exiles his descendants, the Jewish people, would have to endure. When an angel went up, the number of rungs signified how many years it would last, and then, when the angel came down, that particular exile was over.

In this manner, Yaakov observed the fate of various exiles until he noticed one angel which kept going up and up, and gave no signs of ever coming down. This, the Midrash says, was our current exile. Yaakov asked if the angel/exile would ever stop its ascension. He was told at that time, to have faith, and that the exile would end (with the coming of the Messiah) but he was not to know when -- at least, not at that point in his life.

Back to the present parsha. Yaakov has now been informed as to when the Messiah will come and the exile will end but is not permitted to reveal this.

Why? Midrashim say that if the Jewish people knew how long they would have to wait for Mashiach to come to end the current exile, they might lose hope. They might feel their lives were meaningless, incapable as they were of bringing the Messiah.

If the Messiah isn't coming in my generation, they might say, why should I bother?
Why should I bother even being Jewish, keeping the commandments, learning the Torah.

to be continued ... reason -- relevance -- vayechi

Bo etc

9999-12-14T20:21:00.000-08:00

Notes:

How can Pharaoh be made to suffer plague after plague for not letting Israel go when G-d is hardening his heart? It's not fair!

There have been numerous attempts to explain this moral dilemma which seems to deny Pharaoh the Free Will necessary to release the Children of Israel, then punishes him and his country for not doing so.

Some attempts (Sforno) involve the notion that Pharaoh needed his heart hardened in order that, if he did release the Hebrews, it would come from his overcoming G-d's condition upon him and thus, truly exercising Free Will rather than just capitulating to whichever plague.

That's all well and good but I am firmly in the camp against Free Will -- that Pharaoh never really had a chance, poor fellow, and that G-d made sure of that.

So why do I not have a moral dilemma with this?

The Midrash tells us that although the Torah initially says the Hebrews would be enslaved for four hundred years, the ancient Egyptians subjugated us with such zeal and diligence that the foretold four hundred years of slavery were already served by the time a mere two hundred and ten years had passed.

During this time, the ancient Egyptians managed to torture, abuse and break the spirits of the ancestors of the Jewish people in egregiously onerous, and horrible ways. The Torah twice describes this as "B'pharech," which I might loosely translate as "hardship with extreme prejudice."

We all know the story. Taskmasters setting a daily quota for the production of bricks, then denying the ancient Hebrews access to the straw and materials necessary to make the bricks, then whipping the slaves to within an inch of their lives for failing to meet their quota.

This kind of thing does a good job of breaking the spirit, and, so it did. The Hebrews, descended from Abraham, a great military general, and giants like Isaac, Jacob, Judah and Joseph, and possessed of the DNA which would later give rise to huge proletariat movements in Europe and North America, did not rise up against this persecution. They were morally and spiritually beaten down flat, like the matzah we eat at the beginning of the Seders, the ritual meals commemorating Passover, which is this story, the matzah which we call the "Bread of Affliction" symbolizing the fallen, flattened state of the Hebrew slaves.

As one would expect, but as is very telling to me, there is no mention during this time of egregious persecution, that G-d had hardened the hearts of the ancient Egyptians in order for them to be so cruel. It was, evidently, their own initiative to not just enslave the people but to do it extra-harshly and smartly, "b'Pharech."

So, in my books, that was when Pharoah and his cronies had their Free Will, all two hundred and ten years of it. Noone was forcing them to be so zealously inhumane. They rejoiced in it. A small joke: in the Torah, when Pharaoh decides to oppress the Hebrews, he says "Hava nit-chakma lo," i.e., "Let's outsmart them," where the first word in the expression is "Hava," the same word used later in "Hava Nagila,", i.e., "Let us rejoice!"

I think they were having a great old time oppressing the Hebrews. Noone was holding a gun to their heads, notwithstanding that maybe only the ancient Chinese had guns, if anyone at all, at that time.

Two hundred plus years is a long time to abuse a people. Surely, someone might have piped up, and asked, "Is this really necessary? Do we really have to torture these people this way?" Alas, noone was inclined to do this, as they were, evidently, all having too much fun.

The ancient Egyptians may have been ordained by G-d to enslave the Jewish people but the contraction of the planned four hundered years of slavery into two hundred and ten, is an indication that they used their Free Will to enhance the experience infamously well above and beyond the call of duty.

So, that's when they exercised all kinds of Free Will, over those two hundred and ten years.

And, they thus created a problem for G-d.

Here was a people, the Hebrews, descended from the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob's twelve sons, literally the Children of Israel, "Israel" being Jacob's heavenly bequeathed name, who had forgotten who they were.

This slave people, descended from spiritual giants, did not fear G-d. They feared the ancient Egyptians -- who had terrorized and beaten them for over two centuries -- and why would they not?

Out of fear, or, perhaps, Stockholm syndrome, or just plain old assimilation, they had either learned great respect for the pagan deities of the ancient Egyptian culture or had outright accepted them as their gods -- which is why G-d performed the miracles of the plagues, and now stipulated that, before the final plague, the Hebrews tether, slaughter, and publically roast lambs outside their homes, then put the blood on their lintels.

This was an outrageous act, and a hard demand because lambs were revered as deities by the ancient Egyptians.

Remember when Joseph did not want his brothers to assimilate with Egyptian society? He told them to be sure to mention to Pharaoh that they were shepherds -- because this was an abomination to Egypt.

It was an abomination because, to the Egyptians, lambs were sacred. Thus, Pharaoh would not let the Hebrews live in Egypt proper, and gave Goshen, a neighbouring area for the Hebrews to keep to themselves.

Land o'Goshen! Can you imagine? Sheering the gods, and making lamb chops out of them? Abomination! Still, they were Joseph's family, so ...

Back to the more recent past, and the Hebrews who had been bullied and beaten by the ancient Egyptians for over two hundred years were now being asked to commit an act of defiance which defied the imagination, to fly directly in the face of Egyptian religion -- which many had adopted as their own -- in order to align themselves with Hashem, the vaguely remembered G-d of their past, yet to whom they had cried out when things had hit rock bottom.

G-d had tried to jog their memories and impress them with the plagues, expressly stating His intention to get the Hebrews to believe in Him, but there was a problem.

In the early going, the Egyptian sorcerers had been able to duplicate the wonders performed through Aharon and Moses. When Aharon threw his rod down, it became a snake. But so did the Egyptian sorcerers, notwithstanding that Aharon's rod/serpent swallowed theirs.

When G-d, through Aharon, turned the water in the Nile to blood, so, indeed did the Egyptian conjurers.

And, of course, the singularly funniest, and stupidest, act in the entire Torah: when G-d filled Egypt with frogs, in their bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens etc., along came the Egyptian sorcerers, and, guess what? Just to show how great they were, too, they filled Egypt with what? More frogs! As Yogi Berra might have said, it was deja frog all over again. It was frogs everywhere, and when they died, this double cohort of dead frogs really -- really -- stank, according to the Torah.

Like I say somewhere else in this blog, the ancient Egytians, they were sorcerers, yes; rocket scientists, not so much.

But the problem G-d had was, if the Egyptian sorcerers were able to duplicate the signs and wonders He was doing, how were the Israelites going to believe in Him, which is his stated intention?

The answer, He removed Pharaoh's free will by hardening his heart so that He could do more signs and wonders, ones which exceeded the capabilities of the Egyptian sorcerers, again and again, until the point was made.

Free will? They had free will during the two hundred and ten years.

Now? Not so much.

Vaera: notes

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the four cups of the seder come from this parsha

why is v'hotseiti the pre-eminent one

why not v'ga-alti -- after all - 49th level of tuma -- as dangerous as Purim

-- mitachat sivlot mitzraim

tefilla teshuva tzadaka ma-avirin et ro-a hagezera -- who's gezera?

imitatio dei

it's in our power

Yitro

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Parshat Yitro has much to teach. It's the chapter of the"Top Ten" Commandments, or more properly, the Ten Utterances, so called because these commandments were actually spoken by G-d. Not that we could stand listening to them.

Famously, the Voice of G-d was so powerful, that the people fainted dead away when
the Master of the Universe either spoke all ten at once, or uttered the first two, either simultaneously or consecutively.

Tetzaveh

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Idyllic, peaceful, tranquil, "hakol beseder," everything is in order. Sweet. The people are joyfully bringing their gold, silver, fine linens etc. as contributions to the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.

Interestingly, this is a preview, a flash forward to a time a little later on than the one we are in, if we were following the historical progress of the Children of Israel after their exodus from Egypt.

notes:

Shakespeare, Beowulf, what ancient classics used this forward device, returning later to the present? It seems to be a modern device, cetainly used in movies, hence the Torah is very modern -- and possibly -- or probably, movie makers, and authors took this device from the Torah.

other movie narrative perennials taken from the Torah? the Showdown, viz. Korach and Moses. Rivka as the first Wild West Hero (previous blog) ...

purposes: G-d did not really mean it when He threatened to destroy the Children of Israel and start again with Moses. "Chishev et ha-kaitz," i.e. the Torah already records the peaceful aftermath. So, as often is the case, G-d was kidding? He didn't really mean it? "It ain't necessarily so ..."

It's a subtlety to understand that G-d and the Torah often do not really mean what they say. It takes an intuitive understanding of the Torah which many might resist.
There is a wisdom, however, in understanding that the Torah is Truth, regardless of whether or not it seems so, even if we say that what is written is not really true (!)
the purpose of the mishkan is to provide a symbol -- and a real time method -- of "kaparah," atonement for sins committed. There is no sin which cannot be atoned for, as emphatically revealed here, where the kaparah actually precedes the narrative of the sin (the Golden Calf). Before we even see the terrible sin committed by the Children of Israel, i.e., worshipping a Golden Calf virtually moments after G-d resounded the first Commandment to have no other gods before Him, we see the means He provides for remedying the damage, the avodah, the sacrificial services to be performed in the Mishkan, the Place where He dwells in the midst of the people, or more properly, the place where He has returned in forgiveness to dwell in the midst of the people...

which means, basically, "not to worry," we all make mistakes, look: here's the answer to the sin of the Golden Calf even before it happens ...

and so, it may be a remez (hint) to remedy our fears of the upheaval and tumult which will precede the Messianic era. When we say the Grace after Meals we pray that G-d will "with mercy" build Jerusalem rather than with the turmoil widely expected. Perhaps Tetzaveh shows us the peace, joy and tranquility of the Messianic era in advance of the upheaval to show us the light at the end of the tunnel ...

Vayakhel Pekudei

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Apologies but time does not permit me to expand on this. These are notes:

-- here we are, finally ready to build the Mishkan (Tabernacle) which is to house the presence of G-d (the Shechina).

-- oops. before we go into all the activities ... one thing, says Hashem. In the middle of all the preparations and excitement of finally building the Mishkan, Hashem, says "Stop. Remember the Sabbath."

What's that got to do with the context??

There are many explanations, chief among them that the reference to Sabbath, followed by all the various activities required to build the Mishkan teaches us the thirty-nine basic forms of work not allowed on the Sabbath. That's why the reference to Sabbath is there.

I say there's something else going on here. These are the people who after hearing G-d speak the first commandment of having no other gods before Him, went out and made a Golden Calf, and worshipped it, a mere forty days later. Looks like they forgot. The Mishkan they are about to erect is a kaparah (atonement) for that sin, and is designed to bring G-d back into their midst.

So G-d is using this interpolated moment suddenly referring to the Sabbath to remind the people who they are, and to assure them that atonement is at hand through this act of forgiveness, and their slate is clean and they are starting over.

How does the reference to the Sabbath remind the people of who they are?

What is the first reference to Israel in the Torah?

It's not anything to do with Jacob. The first reference in the Torah to Israel is clearly, unequivocally, encoded in the story of Creation. At the end of the Sixth Day, "Yom Hashishi" starts an amazing little code with big significance. We say this part over every Friday night when making Kiddush.

If you take the "Yud" at the end of the word "Shishi," which denotes the end of the week of Creation," and you count seven letters (for the seventh day, perhaps?), you get an "S." Count seven more letters, and you get an "R." Count seven more letters, and you get an "A." Count seven more letters, and you get an "L." Vowels in Hebrew are below the letters, so these letters, in Hebrew, if not quite in English, spell out what? "Israel."

G-d dedicated the very first Shabbos to Israel, and tied Israel inexorably to Shabbos, thereby.

To remind the Children of Israel of the Shabbos at a time when they were trying to re-establish their relationship with G-d, is to tell them (a) G-d is willing to start over, right back to the Beginning, and (b) their job is to remember who they are -- the people chosen by G-d to keep the Sabbath, Israel. It's back to first principles. G-d knows who we are. We sometimes forget. G-d's mention of the Sabbath is our reminder, full of acceptance and encouragement.

Emor: G-d's softer, gentler side

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This Parsha is known for its uncharacteristic use of the verb "Emor," i.e., "Talk to," or "Mention" instead of the usual verb, " Da-ber," "Tell, or Speak To."

As with the English approximations I have employed, there is a striking difference in tone between the two.

The formula in the Torah is usually as follows: "Va-yeda-ber Hashem el Moshe leimor: 'Da-ber el Aharon" -- or -- "el Hakohanim" -- or -- "el Bnei Yisrael ...etc."

"And G-d spoke to Moses, saying: "Speak to Aharon" -- or -- "the Priests" --or-- "the Childen of Israel ...etc."

This is followed by the specific instructions Moses is to convey. The word used for "speak" is "da-ber," a strong word, whose spelling is the exact same letters as "davar" which means "object" or "thing," signifying substance, hardness.

In this case, however, the word G-d uses in asking Moses to convey his instructions is "Emor" which means "talk" or even "mention this" (to the priests).

Existing commentaries have proffered various explanations but no one has mentioned what I believe to be the reason: that G-d is here showing His sensitive side.

The notion that G-d is Fearsome and Mighty is universal. The fact that He is Kind and Sensitive is not as well known.

Commentaries to date have focused on semantics, sentence structure etc. in trying to explain the unusual usage of language here but they have missed what I believe is the essential point, and that is context.

For what is G-d talking about here? He is talking about death in the family.

The instructions G-d is asking Moses to pass on to the priests have to do with the inevitable deaths of someone in their families, a sad topic for humans to ponder. G-d is saying, that, as a class, in order to maintain their spiritual purity, priests, as a rule, must not participate in the ritual disposition of dead bodies but for a parent, a brother, a sister who has not been with a man, they must tend to their proper burial.

The use of the softer word "Emor," mention," I believe, is G-d speaking almost sotto voce, quietly, because He, in his Great Might, has also, Great Sensitivity, to the topic at hand. In a way, He is being "menachem avel,"i.e, "comforting the bereaved" prospectively, in advance.

Therefore, the reason for the word "Emor" is to show that G-d knows human sadness and suffering, and is demonstrating His kindess by broaching this sensitive subject to the priests gently, rather than forcefully.

emor notes

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emor should be daber

the concept of chilul Hashem may well come from this parsha but on closer inspection
we see how the concept has changed over the years

it has become about honour. this is a bit of a mistake

et aviha he mechalelet seems to say the adulterous daughter of a cohen is
disrespecting him and destroying his reputation

what it really means, however, is that she is profaning him but what does profaning mean if not destroying his honour?

it means she is nullifying his holiness because his ability to maintain a position of holiness does, in part, depend on his family. he must marry only women who befit his status as a cohen, and his children must be proper

though it seems to be about honour and reputation it really is about holiness and the ability of human beings to sustain the presence of G-d in their midst.

the word chol means empty. chilul Hashem really means, losing the holiness of Hashem by not following the guidelines designed to keep Him near.

Bamidbar: the complete Jew

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Who or what is a complete Jew? Perhaps someone who learns the lessons implicit in Sefer BaMidbar, aka the Book of Numbers.

The story of the Nazirite from Parsha Nasso tells us that if we get too attached to worldly pleasures we can take a "time-out," and, for a period of thirty days, abstain from wine, and from concerns with our superficial appearance by not cutting our hair, and -- in keeping with our more spiritual and holy focus, refrain from becoming "con-tuma-nated," by touching a dead body.

But, it can only last for thirty days. Psalms tell us we must praise G-d for giving us wine (or, as most say, spirits), because it gladdens our hearts. In order to apologize to Hashem for abstaining from one of His gifts to us, the Nazirite must bring a sin-offering after the conclusion of his ascetic period.

The bottom line is, enjoy life in the prescribed way; do not trivialize or spurn the gifts G-d has given us in order to do so.

Of course, while enjoying life in the prescribed way is G-d's wish for us, there is a whole other sphere of focus for Jews.

The degalim, flag standards with symbolic graphics and letters on them, one for each tribe, are also mentioned in Sefer Bamidbar, in the first, eponymous, parsha. Moreover, all the tribes are grouped into four camps with each camp having a dominant degel.

Is this just a case of school spirit? Flying the colours? It's all that but much more.

The sages tell us that the Children of Israel wanted four camps with standards for each because they had seen it somewhere before. Where? At Mount Sinai.

When the great moment came for Matan Torah, when G-d spoke from the top of Mount Sinai, the Children of Israel could not help but notice that He was accompanied by a host, an army of four divisions of angels surrounding the mountain, each under its own banner, and led by one of four angels, Michael, Uriel, Gavriel, and Raphael.

This is why the Children of Israel wanted four camps with standards: to remind them of the Power and the Glory of G-d they witnessed at Mount Sinai, and, in a way, to relive it.

And this, to me, is the complete Jew: one who has ever uppermost in his mind, the Power and Glory of Hashem, but who makes sure he enjoys the life and world he has been given in a way consistent with Torah, and has a "L'Chaim," a libation of enjoyment, and partakes of the bounty G-d has bequeathed us.

Ruth :

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Ruth superior to Klal Yisrael - they were not allowed to go derech plishtim; she converted in Moab. Children of Israel were not allowed derech plishtim because of avoda zara risk, as a weak, people coming out of avoda zara. Ruth was like Abraham, when all around her were into avoda zara, she still found Hashem.

Four New Explanations Regarding The Mishkan

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This is a space holder entry. I recently had to give numerous divrei Torah on the chapters dealing with the Mishkan. I addressed four very familiar questions asked and answered by the standard commentaries, adding my own original, patented, "Gord Lindsay" explanation for each one.

G-d willing, these will be posted soon in one new entry. And I think perhaps I will have the most recent entries at the top, now ...

Pinchas: Notes: Good zealot bad zealot; contrarian attribute of the Torah

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Notes: compare two incarnations of the same soul:

Pinchas: good zealot: dispassionate, checks halacha, asks Moshe, saves the people

Elijah: bad zealot: gets personally angry against the priests of Baal, angry and critical against the the children of Israel: loses mantle of prophecy;
comes to every Bris and Seder to soften his harsh attitude towards the Jewish people.

Contrarian attribute of Torah: just as during Chanuka time the Torah contrarianly points to Purim, and vice versa, during or around the three weeks, a time of mourning for the destruction of both temples and exile, we read Pinchas: which regales us with the laws of festivals and holidays. "Have faith," the Torah is saying. Learn these laws of rejoicing in the Sanctuary and Temple for their time will come again ...

Acharei--Kedoshim: The Whole Gay Thing: A Torah Perspective

1999-12-22T13:11:00.000-08:00

One of the real hot button issues in this world which directly involves the Torah (the Bible), is homosexuality. It is not my intention to promote or defend homosexuality, rather, to defend The Torah, which is used -- in my opinion, misused -- by some Jews and Christians alike to demonize homosexuals, often to utterly condemn them.

This is wrong. I don't think it's what the Torah wants, nor is it what the Torah actually says. It's my feeling, also, that, although I may seem to be saying shocking, heretical things, here, there are many rabbinic authorities who actually agree with what I am about to say but who will never say so because they are concerned about misleading people who may draw the wrong conclusions, if given half a chance.

Am I in trouble, now! Why on Earth would I deal with such an incendiary topic?

Because I don't think anyone -- that I've heard or seen -- has got it right, yet, and the Torah teaches us "Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof," i.e. "make doubly sure you vigorously pursue truth and fairness."

Our sages say "Hevey metunim ba-deen," or "Be extra careful when you judge." Although this nominally applies to issues of justice and the courts, it most certainly also applies to individuals in our own daily lives, making our own personal judgements of others. Thus, if we are tempted to judge homosexuals by a mistaken understanding of what the Torah says, we have failed to fulfill this important principle.

That's where I come in. I am going to tell you what the Torah really says, he said humbly, and correct centuries of misperceptions and error in a single -- if lengthy -- blog entry. I am also able to leap tall buildings in a single bound -- but that's another story. And, I repeat, I am not here as an apologist for homosexuality, I am here as a defender of truth, justice and the Torah way. I will stray neither right nor left from the words of the Torah, nor will I twist them to fulfill any manner of agenda. Instead, I will free the Torah from the agendas currently being used to colour its meaning.

First, let me establish myself. I am a believing, G-d fearing, Modern Orthodox Jew. I keep the Sabbath; I eat only Kosher food. I believe in "taharas mishpacha," i.e. the non-cohabitation of husband and wife immediately before, during and after her monthly cycle, and her immersion in a mikveh for spiritual purification after her cycle is over. I myself have gone to the mikveh at least a thousand times, to date. By the way, this ritual immersion is where baptism comes from, however relevant that may be.

I have a great love for the Torah, and consider it to be an eternal and transcendent communication from G-d to mankind, especially to us Jews, of course, which contains an inexhaustible, ever-self-renewing motherlode of teaching, insight, guidance, and truth. It will never, in my opinion, be fully comprehended or understood. The rabbis say there are seventy faces to the Torah, indicating its constant revelation of new facets every time one looks into it. "The Living Torah" is a good way to describe it.

So. I believe in the Torah.

Having said that, let me give you my conclusions about G-d's intentions regarding homosexuality as indicated in the Torah. Then, I will elaborate.

In my opinion, the Torah says it's alright to be gay privately, but not alright to promote the lifestyle publicly in a theocratic state.

I know the latter part of the above statement seems to conflict with the high level of tolerance and liberality in our secular society. I do not, however, apologize for the seeming lack of tolerance in the Torah because, to coin a phrase, it's an entirely different ballgame when Daddy's home.

A theocratic state is an anomaly today. Nowadays, everyone extolls the virtues of the separation between "church" and state as a major advance in human history.

However, those of us who are observant, recall learning of a time when connection to G-d was felt, and society was run on G-d's rules, and real holiness was not only desired by the people but achieved.

When we ask Hashem to send the Messiah, we want G-d to "come back" as a "shochen," a resident of human society, and to rule us.

Of course, it's important to distinguish between a wannabe theocratic state where Hashem may not be resident, and a real theocratic state, where He is. When Hashem is present, as opposed to distant, holiness pervades the world. The atmosphere is different, but more of this, later.

In fact, to further clarify my above statements, and to show that Hashem is not being mean and repressive in his commands regarding homosexuality, it can clearly be seen that, in addition to tolerating homosexuality in private, the Torah does, in fact, tolerate even the promotion of a gay lifestyle in societies in general.

OK, now let's get down to specifics.

"Aha!" says everyone. If you believe in the Torah, how can you ignore that famous statement in parsha (chapter) Acharei Mot, trumpeted with great sound and fury from pulpits throughout the land?

"V'et zachar lo tishkav mishkevai isha, to-evah hih." "And a man shall not lie with a man as he does with a woman; it is an abomination."

And so, as our first example of misperception, thundered throughout the land is this word, "abomination," so powerful in English because it contains within it the homonyms for both an explosive device, and a whole country. "It's an a-bomb-i-nation!" any pastor worth their salt will cry, emphasizing the spectre of war and destruction contained within the word, and likely savouring the subsequent shock and awe reverberating dramatically through their house of worship with this highly evocative and resonant combination of component words implying -- without even being fully consciously aware of it -- that homosexuality is a "Bomb" in the "Nation."

What do I think of that?

First of all, I find it kind of amusing. These same churches often teach that Jews and their "Old" Testament have been superseded by the "New" Testament, and are no longer even the chosen people(!) So why are these ministers and priests quoting this "Old" Testament statement, thus conferring great authority upon it, when they've got their bright and shiny "New" Testament which has -- G-d forbid -- replaced the old one?

"The G-d of the 'Old' Testament was a G-d of fury and vengeance," at least some of their leaders say, echoing a long held historical opinion. "Ours is more gentle and forgiving." Then, oddly, they go all sturm and drang on the poor gay community, quoting and acting like the "G-d of fury" they have supposedly moved on from. Which, of course, causes the gay community to react with unnecessary -- and unfortunate -- feelings of hostility towards, and alienation from, G-d, and religion in general.

Now, as for the word "a-bomb-i-nation," it behooves us to understand that this is a specifically English form of linguistic thunder which is an entirely different animal than the original Torah word, "to-evah." So much is lost in the translation of the Torah into English that a great deal of effort must be made to recover what was lost.

The best translation for the word "to-evah" that I can come up with, is the famous Yiddish expression, "Pheh!" which describes something which is distasteful. It does not describe as thunderous a calamity as the resonance of the English word implies, so there is already a difference in gravity between the original Hebrew expression and the English translation, a difference, I submit, which indicates the difference in severity with which G-d actually views the practice of homosexuality rather than the way we think He views it. The vernacular here, is less Earth-shaking, and much more subjective, as are all questions of taste.

Yes, "to-evah" -- which has more than a passing similarity to the supposedly Tongan word, "taboo," thus raising speculation about early Judaic migration, -- has the sense of unacceptability about it but the questions are when and to whom -- questions which I will, G-d willing -- answer later on in what has turned out, in retrospect, to be this nearly endless, oft-revised, blog entry.

What I'm -- eventually -- planning to show, is that (a) while it's not behaviour prescribed for holiness, it's not disobedience against G-d for any Gentile to be gay, if you understand the real meaning of the Torah passages, and (b) it's not such a sin for a Jew, either, and (c) it's misguided to generally condemn homosexuals, if you understand the true meaning of the Torah, and that (d) it's definitely wrong to say that G-d is angry with such people, and -- G-d forbid -- to vent misguided, "righteous" anger at them, on G-d's behalf, as it were. In fact, this last predisposition of some people may actually result in their souls burning in Hell for some time, according to the way I read the messages contained within the Torah.

The truth is, for our next misperception, as I'm sure at least some Jews and Christians know, the G-d of the Torah is not really a G-d of fury and vengeance at all.

How, in the face of all the "evidence" in the text of the Torah, is this possible?

Let us look at one of Moses' most noteworthy encounters with G-d.

"Hashem, Hashem, kel rachum vechanun," are the words heard at the singular moment when G-d passes his "back" across Moses' face. "Merciful and kind" are the attributes which describe the Master of the Universe, "erech apayim" i.e., "slow to anger," rather than "angry and vengeful."

The above passage has very special significance because it is the one time in the Torah when man "sees" G-d's true nature. Moses alone is given this rare privilege. G-d has "appeared" to the Patriarchs before but clearly not this up close and personal. In fact, Hashem says that noone can see His face and live, so He shows Moses His back, perhaps like the tail of a comet streaking by. The result is the "Thirteen attributes of mercy," the exquisite passage in the Torah describing G-d's infinite patience and compassion which is sung on Holy Days, and which is credited with miraculous saving power when invoked by a quorum of ten men, i.e. a minyan, to avert danger or trouble in the community.

That this passage shows the "ultimate truth" about G-d is demonstrated by the life and thought of one the greatest figures of Jewish lore, Nachum Ish Gamzu. Rabbi M. Miller, in his book, Sabbath Shiurim (page 72), goes into great detail on this point.

According to Rabbi Miller, Nachum Ish Gamzu represents perhaps the highest level of spiritual awareness a person can reach, that of "Emet," or Truth. And what is that truth? In brief:

Nachum Ish Gamzu was a man beset by troubles. His constant response to apparent adversity -- and this is how he got his sobriquet -- was "Gamzu letova." Which means, "This, also, is for good." Often, in fact, perhaps as an object lesson to us mere mortals, Nachum's fortunes would miraculously end right-side up even when they started upside-down. But even if things didn't turn out "good" the way we would describe them, they were still good to him.

Rabbi Miller asserts that Nachum Ish Gamzu was at a higher spiritual level than even the great Rabi Akiva, who coined the famous phrase, "Hakol bidei Shamayim ..." That everything, good and bad, comes from Above and we should accept even the bad with faith that there is a reason for it. This, appropriately, Rabbi Miller calls "Emunah," or Faith.

The difference is, to Nachum Ish Gamzu, there was no bad. In his high transcendent perception of things, he was always tuned in to the Emet, the Truth, as embodied by the words spoken when G-d passed his back across Moses' face, "Hashem, Hashem, Kel Rachum, VeChanun," which declare the infinite Goodness of G-d, and the world He has created. Long before the preternaturally wise parlance of today's youth, Nachum Ish Gamzu's credo was "It's all good."

So, there's ample reason within the Jewish tradition to not see G-d as vengeful or angry at all, notwithstanding the agenda of misperception of many who find it to their advantage to portray the Master of the Universe in this way.

But, you say, there are numerous instances in the Torah of G-d causing dramatic deaths, meting out harsh punishments, and making dire Divine threats to the people. G-d even says He is a "jealous G-d," and He will not tolerate the worship of other gods on pain of death. There's also a lot of capital punishment prescribed in the laws of the Torah. Sounds pretty hard-nosed. This has been the basis, therefore, in my view, of a mischaracterization of Hashem.

What I'm saying is that notwithstanding how harsh the afformentioned things seem, they do not in any way capture the "nature" of G-d Himself, who is known -- at least to His people, the Jews, anyway -- as a G-d of Mercy and Lovingkindness.

How to reconcile this apparent contradiction? Let's start with the nuclear family. A child growing up without meaningful punishments for bad acts grows up without self-discipline and respect for others, to say the least. If little Billy Bob is allowed to watch all the TV he wants, and to eat all the ice cream he wants, after he's destroyed his family's living room just for fun, what kind of a man will Billy Bob grow into? Nobody you or I would want to know. I'd give him a mile -- 1.6kilometres -- wide berth if I saw him coming my way.

And were his parents kind to let him get away with all his bad behaviour as a child? No. But had they been the "bad guys," and withheld privileges from him when he misbehaved, even if they were of an appropriately harsh nature, like, in his case, missing his very favourite TV show or a trip to a local restaurant, or even -- Heaven forbid! -- a trip to a local amusement park, would they not then be characterized as cruel and vengeful?

To Billy Bob at the time, such affronts would, for sure, seem cruel and unusual. He might wail, pound the walls, and gnash his little teeth -- until he learns that (a) his parents really do have the authority to rule in these matters, and that (b) he also has power, in that he can get his trip to the amusement park, and his ice cream, if he doesn't break the rules his Mom and Dad have laid out. No infractions, no punishments. Punishments are not inevitable, he sees; they are tied to behaviour, and need not happen at all.

Similarly, punishments may seem harsh in the Torah narrative but they, too, are not inevitable. There is an object lesson in each instance which teaches the people how they may avoid such punishments in the future. More on the meaning and nature of the punishments further on, but first, let's look at the specific context of these notable punishments in the Torah.

To complete the comparison, what if Billy Bob is now forty years old, and his parents are still withholding his ice cream whenever he does something that displeases them. That would definitely be silly now, but it wasn't back then, when he was a child. Just kidding about the ice cream at forty but the point is parents don't send forty year olds to their room; they don't try to influence adult children the same way they did when the children were young, and needed far more help understanding the consequences of their actions.

It is, in fact, a key misperception to think that the members of the Generation of the Exodus were like us, and, consequently, we mistakenly identify with them when all these dramatic events occur, and we react -- or flinch -- accordingly, to every harsh punishment meted out. But this is not the case. We are not like them.

The Children of Israel in the desert were very much, as their name implies, children. They had just gotten out of a cruel state of slavery where they were beaten, and afflicted with punishments without any bad behaviour on their part -- which completely weakened and demoralized them, -- and they were now just beginning to forge an identity as a nation -- unlike we, who have thousands of years of civilization informing our senses.

This fledgling entity of a people had been so beaten down by their Egyptian taskmasters that they had all but forgotten the G-d of their fathers. That's why G-d wreaked such havoc on Egypt with the ten plagues. As G-d says Himself in the Torah, the wonders and signs He goes out of His way to perform were not just to make the Egyptians let His people go, they were done to impress His people so that they would know there is a G-d, and He is with them.

Thus, in the desert, G-d was with them, as a parent leads a small child -- by the hand,-- providing for all their needs. Food came down, spoon-fed from Heaven (manna), a cloud led them by day, and a pillar of fire guarded them by night. When the cloud arose, they broke camp, and followed it. When it settled, they made camp. This was an extraordinary environment, unlike anything we know today, so it really isn't fair to view the Torah events with our sense of what is normal -- or harsh.

The harsh incidents and threats featured in the Torah have to be seen in context, that unlike today, they were appropriate for their time and conditions, i.e., for the formative stage the burgeoning young nation was at, and, therefore, do not reflect upon Hashem in the way some wish to misperceive, i.e. as frighteningly punitive.

We would be very afraid if these conditions pertained today, but they don't. Our Day of Judgement comes after we've lived. Then, however, it was a raw frontier religion where extreme measures were necessary in order to impress upon a people new to such options, the life and death consequences of their actions. When G-d says, "choose life," He means there is no need for harsh punishments at all -- when the right path is taken. There was, however, a need to demonstrate the opposite in graphic ways which would impress, like the Ten Plagues, the nascent collective consciousness of the nation.

Furthermore, Hashem is known as the Keeper of Souls. Since our view of reality embraces the spiritual afterlife, we can't say we know the final disposition of the souls of the people who were punished. Certainly, the Midrash tells us that the souls of Nadav and Avihu, the two prominent sons of Aharon whose souls were immolated by a fire coming from G-d because they approached Him incorrectly, like a child playing with an electrical outlet, ended up in a high position in Heaven.

And, to be somewhat blunt about it, life was cheap. The cost of wiping out even thousands of people was not as grievous as it sounds. It may sound a bit callous for me to say this but those of the Generation of the Exodus who died as a result of punishment from Hashem, i.e., for the sin of the golden calf, and for complaining about the conditions etc., were going to die anyway. They had no future beyond the desert, and their disobedience to G-d, and its punishment was, as I've said, an important object lesson for the new child/nation, and part of the process of the people's becoming.

The Generation of the Exodus, after all, were not going into the Promised Land. They had been "doomed" to wander in the desert until a new generation arose -- one which did not have a slave mentality, and could fight, and fend for themselves, i.e. the next stage of the child/nation's growth into independence. The pretext of the incident of the men sent to spy out the land coming back with a bad report was only a confirmation of what G-d already knew, that this generation, perhaps the holiest of all generations for having been present at the revelation at Mount Sinai, did not have the right stuff to conquer and cultivate the Promised Land.

The women of the Exodus, by the way, did not participate in any of the great sins, and since they were not required to fight, they did not die out, and lived to enter the Land of Israel. As did the men remaining in the last year in the desert, when those who expected to die on the fateful 9th of Av, the anniversary of the spies' failure, figured by the 15th of Av if they hadn't died yet, they wouldn't -- and didn't -- which is one of many reasons the 15th of Av is a happy day in the Jewish calendar. But I digress.

The Exodus/Desert Generation, then, was unlike our world today, where -- supposedly -- every person is someone who "can grow up to be President," and has a future, so we shudder when we make the mistake of misidentifying ourselves with the fortunes of those of that fateful generation who were punished, and wrongly think of G-d as angry and vengeful, a misperception borne of our cross-cultural overidentification. Then was not now, nor even two thousand years ago. These were the raw early days of a people aborning. To think the G-d of the "Old" Testament would continue to overtly use these broad methods of judgement is to ignore history. G-d has not acted as He did in the Torah since the days of the Torah. That was then; this is now -- but, guess what? It's the same G-d. Besides which, if you look at history, people have done much worse things, haven't we?

Also, the wholesale deaths of large groups of rebellious and/or insolent groups of people in various incidents in the desert was, perhaps, a way for G-d to turn over the soil, the souls of the people who could not conquer the Promised Land, so that it might yield stronger produce in the next crop cycle, i.e. the generation which would go on to conquer the land.

The idea of an afterlife aside, it's a good bet at least some of the souls -- possibly all of them -- who died in the desert were reborn into the new generation. How do I know this? Because reincarnation is a fully embraced tenet of Judaism. I think it's an elegant theory that the souls were recycled, having learned their lessons, into the stronger, new generation. Call it a hunch.

And by the way, it wasn't such a punishment for this entire generation to "wander" in the desert until a new generation came along. Think about it. All their needs were taken care of; they didn't have to worry about making a living or finding food or accommodations, and as a people who showed a clear fear of having to conquer the land when the spies came back with an intimidating report, they must have been relieved to be now off the hook, no longer having to worry about warring with the indigenous peoples of Canaan.

These people had heard the voice of G-d, and were engaged every day in Torah study, like young people in school, older students at Yeshiva, and grownups who devote themselves exclusively to Torah study; they had the unique experience of G-d's Shechinah dwelling in their midst,and they had nothing to do for thirty-seven years except enjoy this sheltered, ideal, idyllic existence. Sounds to me like a really high, exclusive religious retreat where you don't have to worry about re-joining the workaday world; you just keep feeding your soul Torah every day, along with the manna, enjoying the extraordinary knowledge that the Divine source of the Torah is present nearby in the camp. And since it was the desert, it was always Summer Camp.

Where do I sign up?

In addition, and a propos of G-d's dwelling in the camp, to further separate us from our misperception that G-d was cruel or vengeful by mistakenly comparing then to now, we should consider a theory of mine that the incidents of severe punishments at the time of the Torah narrative may be seen to have a purpose beyond the usual perspectives we have on such things.

More than to serve as dire warnings against sin, per se, I believe these instances are there to impress upon us, even today, the difference between living in a time when G-d dwells among us, and a time, like today, when G-d has distanced Himself from us.

When Hashem (the Holy Name) is "in the room," as He is in all the narratives of the Torah, it's a different ballgame entirely, where life and death, as we know them, take on a greater context, meaning and immediacy. Today, for instance, if a bunch of people -- even Jews -- wanted to make a golden statue of a calf, and worship it, I'd scratch my head incredulously, maybe try to talk them out of it, but failing that, I'd then simply let them to go their merry way. I'm certain that noone would put them to death, as was done to the worshippers of the golden calf in Exodus. And if anyone did wreak "vengeance" upon them, I'd expect that person or persons to be arrested, tried and punished within our society's court system.

So, notwithstanding the events as they unfold in the Torah, nowadays, when Hashem is not in the room, we don't see a whole lot of instances of the ground opening up, and swallowing rebellious people, or instant plagues etc. This isn't the time for that, and that kind of thing may never happen again. Most importantly, it's not the time -- and never was, even when Hashem was in the room, -- for anybody to try to imitate their idea of G-d by bringing forward "the wrath of G-d," themselves, as they imagine it to be, and visiting it upon others.

It's misguided, in other words, to blow up abortion clinics, to beat up homosexuals, or to do anything violent in the so-called "name" of G-d because, (a) it's not our job as human beings to do what we think is G-d's job -- in fact, as we shall see later, this in itself could make G-d "angry," because we are taking over what we think He is failing to do, and (b) the desert, burgeoning child/nation conditions specifically linked to G-d's acting in a violent way do not pertain today, and will not necessarily pertain tomorrow either, certainly not for the Jewish people who have been a self-governing nation three times already, and (c) if we really understood the situation, we would know that G-d was never really "angry," but used anger as a metaphor for the result of ignoring His law while he is "in the room," and to guide His people to grow up in the right direction, a direction which would still pertain even after G-d "leaves" the room.

The idea behind the notion of the G-d of the "old" Testament being one of vengeance and fury, therefore, comes from the dramatic harshness of the consequences of sin only in G-d's presence. The real meaning of it all, as I see it, is to teach us that G-d is powerful beyond our understanding, and to play around with His laws and instructions while He is present is not a good idea. Then, when we internalize that, we can take it with us into our independent adulthood.

Consider the example, as mentioned above regarding Nadav and Avihu, of a baby playing near a hot, open oven, or sticking something into an electrical outlet. That baby's got to have parental protection or else it could get its goose cooked, not because the oven or electricity are "angry" at it but because that's simply the way it is. The nature of a hot stove or an electrical current is not an act of emotion. Its effect on the human who runs afoul of that nature is a matter of physics, not retribution. The "fury and vengeance" thing, is, therefore, really a matter of children playing with fire, and the consequences of that, not of any emotion on G-d's part.

And, yet, the phrase "G-d's anger was kindled" appears throughout scripture, and it has even been enshrined in our daily prayers. Every day, when Jews recite the "kriyat shema," the special three paragraphs excerpted from the Torah, we read that if Jews do not follow G-d's commandments, then "the anger of G-d will be kindled against you," and bad things will happen. What are we to make of that?

I call it G-d's anthropomorphisation of Himself, as a device to explain the severe consequences of sin in His presence -- or in the Holy Land -- in terms we can understand.

The first thing, as I think I've said in other blogs, is that, just as the Gershwins wrote so many years ago in a song in their opera, Porgy and Bess:

It ain't necessarily so. It ain't necessarily so.
The things that you're liable to read in the Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.

Which, actually, is what religious Jews believe.

The Written Torah is not the whole story, it requires the Oral Tradition to illuminate, and explain it. For instance, there were in the history of the Jewish Commonwealths, at different times, sects which only recognized the literal written word of the Torah, and who sat in the dark and cold on the Sabbath because the Torah says "do not kindle fire on the Sabbath."

They were not real fundamentalists because in Judaism, you need to know the Oral tradition transmitted by Moses to Joshua and the Elders and on down which taught the ways to interpret the written word, along with many other elaborations, in order to know what to believe in, in the first place.

The Oral tradition, for instance, tells us we may have fires burning on the Sabbath giving light and warmth, if we light them before the Sabbath.

There are other instances, i.e., where the Written Torah says the word "wine," and those who know the Oral tradition understand that "water" is actually what it's referring to. Or that the word "Sabbath" can mean a holiday rather than the actual seventh day of rest.

So, it ain't necessarily so. The things that you're liable to read in the Bible may mean something quite different, in the light of deeper understanding.

And so, I think there's another hidden aspect in the whole notion of G-d's "anger" being kindled.

G-d is divine and transcendent, and really is not given to human emotions like fury and anger. So how is it that His "anger is kindled?" This expression is, as stated above, obviously what we call "anthropomorphism," i.e., the "morphing" or shaping, of our view of G-d from that of a transcendent, divine and ineffable Being into a more familiar one, that of being like a man, replete with human emotions.

The Torah could just as easily have said "if you disobey My Laws, here and now, when I am amongst you, you will suffer great consequences, for the power behind them is greater than you can imagine, and will squash you like a bug."

But G-d -- in a move which inadvertently gives rise to the whole school of thought of the G-d of vengeance -- purposefully couches Himself as a father figure, displaying the human emotion of anger.

But if G-d, the Creator, the Supreme Being behind and above the universe, who is beyond human understanding, does not really get angry, why does he pretend to?

That's one reason right there. We can better understand what we know, and what better way to bring a fledgling nation along, hinting at the great power leading them than by making that power, even when it wreaks destruction on them, friendly, paradoxically, by being characterised as someone loving and familiar, i.e. a Father. Fathers may punish but they also love, and they care personally about us. To this, we can relate.

I perceive, in addition to this, a certain persuasive dynamic involved in G-d's so-called "anger," based on instances I've seen in the Torah and Haftorah (those scriptural writings which are not the Five Books of Moses, like the Prophets).

Especially, let's take the example of Uzah who was in a contingent with King David accompanying the Holy Ark which was born by oxen. The load shifted on the oxen, and Uzah reached out to steady it. G-d then became "angry" at Uzah, and killed him.

Seems harsh and vengeful, I know, but we have to remember that we're dealing with figures of speech. To the chronicler, G-d's action of killing Uzah was a show of anger, a very human emotion. But I believe that G-d is divine, and not given to petty human emotions, so what's up with that?

I believe, first of all, as stated above, that things are very different when Hashem is "in the room." You've gotta know you better be on your best behaviour, respectful, aware, and in awe, when G-d is in town. Because He represents something so much greater than us, if we aren't acknowledging that, we're encouraging the community to disrespect, and to deny Him, G-d forbid.

Uzah reached out to steady a load on animals that was not an ordinary load. It was the Holy Ark, containing the tablets both whole and broken, resonating with divine power and significance. Such a divine object does not need human hands to steady it. To steady it, is to deny G-d's ability to look after His own. Unfortunately for Uzah, his action stood as a public denial of G-d's power which encouraged people to think of Hashem as less than omnipotent.

And so, my rule of thumb is as follows: When G-d is "in the room," i.e, when He is manifest and present among us, and we treat G-d as less than G-d, i.e., the same way we would treat a fellow human being, like someone who needs help balancing a load on a team of oxen, or someone whom we can replace with, say, an inanimate statue, or if we live in the Promised Land with the Temple standing, and brush off G-d's laws as if He were just another Self-Help author, then G-d shows us in return, a human face, and acts in a human way, i.e. with "anger.". This kind of response is called "mida k'negged mida," or "measure for measure," or even "tit for tat." We treat G-d as a human rather than as the Master of the Universe, and He responds in kind by embodying our lesser version of Him, and acting in a human way. So, if G-d gets "angry" with us, it's a response we create by treating him as less than G-D, not because that's the nature of Hashem.

This, of course, is the classic object lesson on how we are to approach Hashem -- with the appropriate awe and respect. And I'm not saying that extreme measures will not occur in the birthing of the Messianic Era where doubting masses may suffer a similar fate to that of the Generation of the Exodus by failing to proffer any respect to G-d when He returns closer to our Earthly existence.

In his response to the lack of such, however, maybe we should now know that G-d will not really be angry. In actuality, I think he is bemused, -- albeit another anthropomorphism, -- amused at our thinking that the Supreme Being, Master of the Universe could ever really be angry -- when, in truth, He is not susceptible to such emotions. But at least, we can relate.

And, as indicated above, now, when G-d is not in the room, it is tragic and misguided for anyone to think they must act with fury and vengeance in G-d's stead. Those displaying "righteous" anger in G-d's name are making a big mistake, if they really are angry, themselves. They are trying to imitate G-d as they misunderstand Him, and this is a source of great, and unnecessary, strife in our world.

When a devout, large Jewish man, for instance, throws a smaller woman to the floor of a bus in Jerusalem, and spits on her because she refuses to sit in the back of that bus -- or wait for another bus -- in accordance with his understanding of their mutual religion, we have something far more akin to "roid" rage (the irrational anger afflicting those who take anabolic steroids to boost their testosterone in order to excel in athletic competitions), than G-dly justice.

We humans must understand that when we get angry, it's usually because our personal agenda is being blocked, and how dare anyone get in our way or deny us? Our anger is selfish, like the petulance of Billy Bob, the child being denied his ice cream. Even when we think we are angry for G-d's sake, we really are not. We are aroused to go to war for our individual egos or for the collective ego of the group to which we belong, not really for G-d, though we may protest as much to the rooftops.

I believe there is a misinformed "testosterone" school of religion which feeds on the misperception of G-d as angry and vengeful. By culturing this notion within themselves, and by an overly strict division of gender roles, where men are the sole power, heads, and arbiters of family and community life, adherents actually develop either a physically high level of testosterone or a high level of spiritual testosterone. Too high, for this leads to the above described "roid" rage, where high levels will make a person -- even a woman -- given to fits of irrational anger.

There was only one person in all of Yiddishkheit who could really handle a massive amount of testosterone, and that, in my opinion, was Samson. The rest of us who, one way or another, manage to overly boost our testosterone levels -- physical or spiritual -- are playing with fire.

What, sadly, is missing, then, from the learned, devout and well-schooled man of the attack on the bus in Jerusalem, is in fact, a true appreciation of the G-d of the Torah, as I have outlined above, that as a Kel Rachum VeChanun, a G-d of infinite compassion and patience, Hashem never really gets angry in the human sense. He only pretends to, as in an object lesson to a child. To truly know the G-d of the Torah, one must look beyond the simple story, and its misperception, and contemplate the way G-d describes Himself.

In other words, when G-d says He is angry in the Torah, He is, in the final analysis, kidding. He is speaking figuratively. It amuses Him that people believe in His anger but it helps people to understand the consequences of their behaviour, if He couches it this way.

Thus, the only "righteous" religious anger I will tolerate on the part of religious leaders is if they, like Hashem, are not really angry, and have a full sense of G-d's love and compassion which they consciously -- and humorously -- know puts the lie to their show of ire. In other words, I will only accept knowingly feigned anger in a sermon because then, G-d's love and compassion will inform it with kindness and inclusivity rather than hate and polarization.

It's tragic that there are so many who don't know this, yet. There are so many peoples, movements, schools of various religions who espouse hate and anger because they think that's what G-d wants when nothing could be further from the truth. To those who are "angry for G-d," who are trying to emulate the anger they think they see in their superficial understanding of the Torah, I say, look deeper. Think deeper.

Remember the story of Uzah. G-d does not need us to do his work for Him. To imagine He does, is to diminish Him, to imply that He is not capable, and this is, perhaps, the biggest "No-No" of all. Bottom line: never presume G-d needs you to "fill in" for Him, should your expectations of vengeful retribution for certain sins of others not be met.

So, to all who zealously and devoutly feel that cleaving to G-d involves acting violently on His behalf, I beg you to reconsider. You may actually be insulting G-d, and may find yourselves in great spiritual jeopardy come the Judgement Day. Think about the fact that our loving G-d is not really angry at all, so it would be a mistake to act angry just to try to be like Him.

Someone will no doubt say, "But since G-d is not "in the room" with us nowadays, maybe we should pick up where he left off. Is it not our responsibility to repair the world (in Hebrew, "tikun olam"), to make it a better, more spiritual place?

Yes, it is our responsibility to make the world a better, more spiritual place. That's our job. Let's not try to do G-d's job as well. It's not our place to judge and punish others for what we perceive to be spiritual crimes. In fact, to do so, would be a spiritual crime. I think our job is more along the lines of doing G-d's will rather than inventing it, and practicing good values like forgiveness and understanding.

As far as G-d being angry at homosexuals, it's not happening, no matter how much religious leaders may wish -- in imitatio dei, they think -- to fulminate from the pulpit. G-d's response to homosexuality, is never couched that way. Punishment, under very limited and specific circumstances is promised, yes, but circumstances we need to explore more deeply. Anger, no. What "kindles" G-d's "anger," say, by the making of idols etc. is usually characterized by the actions of a group of people who deny His supremacy in public, rather than the private, personal behaviour of few. So, notwithstanding public displays specifically designed for the sole purpose of insulting and rebelling against G-d, our first principles approach to homosexuality, is not to thunder and fulminate because G-d never does so.

What about Sodom and Gomorrah, you ask? Lot (pun) of destruction there. Surely, G-d's anger? Nope. This is another classic case of misperception associated with homosexuality.

G-d did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because he was "angry" about the sexual practices there. As we now should know, G-d wasn't angry at all. The Torah commentaries are clear that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah came about because these societies had become mini versions of the Generation of the Flood, a society which completely ignored the plight of the less fortunate and which formally banned charity, hospitality, and human caring -- and had no need for G-d. In Sodom and Gomorrah, it was forbidden to help strangers -- which is why Lot got into trouble bringing the three wayfarer/angels into his home.

As with the Generation of the Flood, things had gotten so bad that they were beyond redemption but nowhere does it say that G-d's anger was kindled. It was a cool, clinical decision. Just like it was with the Generation of the Flood, people in Sodom and Gomorrah had had it so good, they thought they didn't need G-d, and they wouldn't share what they had with anyone else. They refused to treat visitors and the less fortunate as human beings. This sent a signal up to Heaven.

Now, with the Generation of the Flood, it does say "hishchit col basar darco," that all flesh had corrupted its way, and there is even mention of marriage contracts being written betweeen humans and animals, but sexual peculiarities were not the reason for the Flood. Once again, it was the complete disregard for the plight of one's fellow human being's rights that brought about that destruction. It was called "Chamas," people wantonly stealing from one another without any qualms or glimmers of conscience or consideration for one's fellow human being.

So, let's say it again: Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because of any sexual practices of the inhabitants. As much as people like to think this, it just isn't so, according to the Torah, the one true authority in this matter. It was the cruelty and greed of the inhabitants that caused their own destruction.

Lot's wife is a case in point. She begged off having the three wayfarer-angels over for dinner because she was wary of the rules against hospitality. Her excuse was, she didn't have any salt -- a required component of any meal. And we all know what happened to her.

Now, according to what I've heard, at any given time, about five to ten percent of the population is homosexual. Sounds like a pretty natural phenomenon to me. So, having heard the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, are we to castigate, revile and fail to accept homosexuals as human beings, so that we turn into the Sodomites, or are we better than that?

In fact, now that we're finally down to the core misperceptions, I believe the Torah clearly tells us that it is not disobedience against G-d's will for a gentile to engage in homosexual behavior. And, yes, I know this goes against the grain of a long line of tradition, including the notion of the "sheva mitzvot shel b'nei Noach," the source, in my opinion, of yet another misperception.

The "sheva mitzvot shel b'nei Noach," also known as the "Noahide Laws" are the "Seven Commandments" to all the sons of Noah, i.e. the entire human race which descended from him after the Flood, as a subset of the "Ten Commandments." All humankind -- not just Jews -- are supposed to observe them. Or at least, if they do observe them, these non-Jews will earn a reward in Heaven.

While the actual seven commandments specific to all humankind may vary from one interpretation to another, some have said that "giluy arayot," the uncovering of nakedness, i.e. sexual practices, is among them. I will explain the problem with this view below, but for now, I will make this observation:

While it is debatable whether or not all the forbidden sexual liaisons listed in the Torah are formally forbidden to all the peoples of the world (see below), it is unequivocally clear that the primary source for this thinking is the commandment, "Lo Tin-af," "Thou shalt not commit adultery." From this, some have derived a broader principle of sexual promiscuity which includes a proscription against homosexuality.

Now, my question is this: How many of those in the throngs of religious people who rail righteously and piously against homosexuality have committed, or are committing, adultery?

While it is a matter of interpretation whether or not homosexuality is forbidden for all the peoples of the world, there is no doubt amongst the proponents of the Noahide laws that adultery is so proscribed.

So, I would suggest that all the people -- religious leaders included -- who have committed, or are committing adultery, be quiet. That alone might reduce the din of noise against homosexuals, and give us all more room to think.

The problem, actually, with adding all of these and sundry sexual practices to the prohibition of adultery in the Seven Noahide laws, is the Torah itself.

Where, after all, does that famous "a-bomb-ination" quote come from? It comes from a special pair of consecutively linked parshas (chapters) called "Acharei Mot," and "Kedoshim."

And what is the purpose of these parshas? To tell the Children of Israel, that as the Chosen People, the recipients of the Torah, they must rise to a level of holiness beyond that of the rest of the world. To that end, they are given a long list of things they can and cannot do. They are told which animals are spiritually pure enough for them to eat, and which animals -- and other creatures -- are not, i.e. what's kosher and what's not. They are told in great detail how to -- and how not to -- handle sacrifices properly. They are told not to drink blood -- so much for the blood libel misperception -- as well as a host of other rules.

In the first of these two parshas, Acharei Mot, they are also given, in great and excruciating detail, a long list of forbidden sexual liaisons, or "giluy arayot." Interestingly, these deal mostly with a man's extended family, and include a kind of broadened view of incestuous relations, i.e. with mothers-, and daughters-, sisters-in-law, etc. Intercourse with animals is forbidden. And, yes, homosexuality is mentioned here, in the famous "a-bomb-i-nation" statement.

What's interesting is that, in this list in Acharei Mot, and in the next one, in Kedoshim, adultery is just one item of many. This, therefore, leads me to conclude that the prohibition against adultery does not automatically include homosexuality or any of the extended family liaisons described in Acharei Mot, as the proponents of such an interpretation of the Noahide laws assert. While I can see the notion of "short-hand" in extracting one of these undesirable sexual liasons to represent all, I really feel that homosexuality, being so different from all of the other proscribed interpersonal relations -- all of which are heterosexual -- would really need a line of its own, as it has in Acharei Mot, being the only practice singled out as a "to-evah."

But -- good news for adulterers! -- it's possible that not even adultery should be included in the Noahide Laws.

Remembering that parsha Acharei Mot is instructive to the Jewish people alone, and not to any other nations, I must exempt other nations from the prohibition against homosexuality, and, indeed from all sorts of sexual practices, as listed in these parshas.

In fact, the sad truth is that the Torah inadvertently obligates other peoples to engage in such activities.

If one of the ways in which the Jews are to be holier than other nations is not to engage in homosexual -- and other types of sexual -- behaviour, then, it's a logical necessity in the Torah, that other peoples do engage in these practices. The Torah, therefore, whether we like it or not mandates (there's a word), homosexual -- and other types of sexual -- activity amongst gentile nations. And, since it's mentioned, too, in these parshas, maybe even the prohibition of adultery is not one of the commandments for the whole world to observe.

Maybe the Children of Israel are just being "reminded" of something all peoples are forbidden to do? Maybe these prohibitions apply to all the world?

"You shall not follow after the practices of Egypt where you dwelled, and you shall not follow after the practices of the Canaanites where you are going to dwell," says G-d as a preface to this section on sexual practices. Later on, at the end of both parshas, G-d makes reference to the fact that the Canaanites committed all these
practices which were disgusting to Him, and tainted the land, and that is why both He and the land are kicking them out.

So G-d is getting rid of the gays. Should we follow suit? Shall we ride them out of town on a rail? Shall we try to find out who is gay, and then shun them? Shall we curse them, revile them, discriminate against them, bring the wrath of G-d upon them?

Ah, but wait a minute. Does G-d go to Egypt, and say "OK, all you homosexuals, OUT! (A different kind of "outing," to be sure.) In fact, does G-d go to any other country, and say "Gays must go!" (in Yiddish, probably, "Gay avek!").

No, He does not, and here we have an insight into G-d's true outlook on the matter, as demonstrated in the Torah.

Sure, G-d expresses his distaste (the "Pheh" factor, see below for the possible reason regarding homosexuality) for certain activities, by calling them "to-evahs" but He clearly is not ordering the entire world to cease and desist from them. G-d, in fact, his distaste notwithstanding, clearly accepts -- albeit while holding His nose -- these behaviours in other peoples of the world. The prohibitions of these parshas, therefore, apply solely to the Jews.

And here, I know I've just offended the entire gay community. It sounds very insulting to say G-d is holding his nose while tolerating their behaviour. Surely, I've touched an old nerve, raised some oft-raised hackles, and engendered the classic resentment and resignation gays must feel when told -- inaccurately -- for the millionth time, that G-d, the Master of the Universe, doesn't like them. How horrible. Beneath the tough, world-weary shrugs there must be hurt, a hurt that runs deep, and I think a lot of religions should apologize to gays for how they have treated them.

As I will show below, we have to understand which aspect of G-d was speaking when these statements were made. G-d had a specific reason for telling the Children of Israel that He didn't like homosexual behaviour. Moreover, it was a private, "entre-nous" communication. It was never meant for the whole world to hear. It's in the Torah, after all, and the Torah was given solely to the Jewish people. It's really a private communication, and if anyone wants to eavesdrop, they do so at their own risk.

The wide range of people who have jumped on the bandwagon to condemn gays because of these statements in the Torah aren't fully apprised of the meaning and context of the statements. They don't understand, for instance, that G-d will never hold anyone responsible for something which is beyond their control, and will not despise them, as I will discuss later, and they don't understand that it was a unique and different situation in which these statements applied.

These inflammatory statements about homosexuality don't even necessarily apply to Jews, anywhere and everywhere.

It is the Holy Land, the land of Israel which is the key here. G-d wants His standards to apply in Israel, the Promised Land for his Chosen People when Israel is functioning as a Torah state. Although He certainly wouldn't mind spiritual purity breaking out all over, He knows the unlikelihood of that, and abides. But having given the Torah, the System of all Systems for achieving and maintaining holiness, to the Children of Israel, G-d needs a home where both may thrive together.

There are mitzvahs (commandments), for instance, which only apply when the Jewish people are living in Israel, and the Holy Temple is standing. These include, of course, all the sacrificial services, as well as bringing portions of one's crops, livestock etc to the Bes Hamikdash (Holy Temple). Holiness and blessedness in the world at large reach new heights when these conditions pertain. And, in such times, a higher standard of holiness is required of the Jewish people. Violators of the Sabbath would be prosecuted and punished. When the Temple is not standing, however, well ... just look at the State of Israel today.

The land of Israel itself is holier soil than anywhere else in the world. It is where, as I discussed in my blog on Chayei Sarah, there is a portal to Olam Haba, the eternal spiritual world. It is where Isaac was bound for sacrifice, and where the then-future Temples would stand. It is the land promised to Abraham, the Patriarch, as I discussed in my blog on Lech Lecha, who stood alone in a world of idolatry and recognized Hashem. G-d gave this land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob so that they might serve Him, and be holy, a testament to the world. It is there -- and only there, notwithstanding the voluntary committment of Torah Jews everywhere -- that G-d insists his holy standards be kept.

Which, by the way, is why I fear for the State of Israel, considering the things that Jews are doing there on its holy soil. This is one vector of concern, i.e. where Hashem's dire warnings against spiritual misdeeds combine with an independent fuse other than His patience -- the tolerance of the land itself.

The Rambam, aka Maimonides, if memory serves, tells us that the reason the Land of Israel was desolate for centuries -- even millennia -- was because the Jews, when they were previously living there as a nation, failed to let the land rest every seventh year, the fallow year, known as "shmitta." Failing to get its scheduled rest while the Jewish nation lived on it, the land caught up on its rest during the years it was subsequently desolate, as predicted in the Torah itself. It was only after 1948 C.E. that the Jews came back as a nation, and made the "desert bloom." Til
then, there might as well have been a sign on the land, "Gone Fishing."

This, it is worth noting, is related to but distinct from the act of faith required not to cultivate land for a year, and expect there to be enough food to sustain both the farmers and all the people -- which some say is the real point of shmitta. Nevertheless, there is something about the land ...

Nowadays, there are ways in which shmitta is being observed, largely through selling the land to a non-Jew during the shmitta year, so that the land may be cultivated, just not by a Jew. While I appreciate the thought and compassion behind this approach, I note it still does not allow the physical land to rest, and I worry that this is not the correct solution. Observant Israeli kibbutzim have, in the past, covered the land with plastic tarp, and then covered the tarp with new soil which was cultivated as an acknowledgement of the principle of letting the land rest. Still, new land is being worked in Israel during the shmitta year, with this approach.

To my mind, the ideal solution -- apart from the ideal of just letting everything go, and having faith there will be enough -- is hydroponic agriculture, which grows produce outside of the ground. The nutrients that plants usually absorb from the soil are dissolved in water, and fed to the plant this way. No soil is needed, and even less water is used in this form of agriculture. If Israeli farmers could use hydroponics exclusively every seventh year, the land would truly get its rest, -- and produce would be available -- and I wouldn't have to worry about it.

Letting everything go, and having faith, is the hardest. The joke is told of a man who fell down a cliff and managed to grab hold of a protruding branch with one hand. As he dangled precariously, he called out to G-d for help. A voice came out of the clouds, and said, "I will save you if you have faith in Me. Let go of the branch." To which the man responded. "Is there anyone else up there?" But back to the land.

So, if the actions of the Jewish nation on the land vis-a-vis shmitta had repercussions which reverberated through thousands of years, what can we expect from the fouling up of the land today with prostitution, sex slavery, and all manner of things specifically shown to be not kosher in the Torah? Stories abound, for instance, of how the Jewish Agency, early in the history of the State of Israel, prevented young boy immigrants from saying Kaddish for their parents, and from being religious at all, obliging them to eat "white steak," i.e., pork, on the anti-religious kibbutzes? And, of course, the militant "lo-dati" (non-believer) population of Israel are always proclaiming it's a mitzvah to break the mitzvahs.

One thing the Torah is clear about. Israel is a holy land, and the Canaanites were expelled because they did things unbefitting the higher kedusha (holiness) of the land. Jews were to be no different.

So, I worry.

The idea of homosexuality as a "to-evah" especially applicable to the Land of Israel, leads us to explore the nature of the whole concept of "to-evah."

The "Pheh" factor, after all, is subjective, as I've said. It is not an absolute, as the word "a-bomb-ination" seems to imply. This also helps us to place into perspective G-d's opinion of homosexuals.

One time-honoured method of interpreting the Torah, as taught in the Oral Tradition, is to recognize recurrences of rare words or unique phrases, and to compare them. I discussed and demonstrated this at length in my blog on parsha Toldot when comparing Rivka to her son Eisav, showing how the Torah linguistically links them as being alike.

We can do the same for the concept of To-evah.

Tellingly, the word "to-evah," does not find its only mention in the Torah from the mouth of G-d, discussing sexual mores.

When Joseph, as Viceroy of Egypt, invites his brothers to live there, he wants them to live in the province of Goshen, away from the corruption of Egyptian society, so he tells his brothers to emphasize to Pharaoh that they are shepherds.

Why?

Because that was an a-bomb-i-nation!

As I point out every Passover while conducting the Seders, the ritual meals dedicated to the retelling of the story of the Exodus, the Hebrews lived in Goshen, as proposed by their brother, Joseph, because, as shepherds, they were engaged in an activity which was a "to-evah le-mitzrayim," "an abomination to Egypt."

What was this a-bomb-i-nation?

Keeping sheep.

The Egyptian culture of the time was a pagan one which included the worship of certain sacred animals, cats and sheep being chief among them.

Here were the Hebrews coming to Egypt to live, with their flocks of these sacred beings, but instead of venerating them, they were shearing them, slaughtering them, eating lamb chops ... It was not nice! Pheh!

In fact, our relationship to sheep forms a large part of the dynamic of the Passover seders illustrating first the fall, and, then the rise of the Jewish people via this woolly issue. Before you say, "Baaaaa, Humbug!" look at the history.

The Hebrew tribes came down as masters of sheep, then they assimilated into Egyptian society, became slaves, and eventually fell so far spiritually and morally that they adopted the pagan beliefs of the Egyptians, and feared sheep rather than G-d Himself. This got to the point where the first mitzvah G-d famously gave them as a nation was to slaughter a lamb, and put its blood on the doorpost, so He would pass over their homes, while killing all the first-born in Egypt. This was not an easy task because they feared their Egyptian taskmasters, as well as the sheep themselves.

Killing the sheep, in spite -- or because -- of their trepidation to do so, was, therefore, the first step in their rise out of perdition to freedom, nationhood, and, ultimately, the Promised Land.

The lesson for us, here, though, is that the Torah is telling us that the concept of to-evah is relative, not absolute. In fact, it is a lot like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder.

I personally enjoy eating lamb chops, much as I think of sheep as cute, cuddly creatures, and I don't feel sheepish about this, at all. Yet, to some, i.e., the ancient Egyptians, my munching on mutton is, yes, a "to-evah."

Thus, we may deduce from the Torah, that "One man's a-bomb-i-nation, is another man's lamb chops."

How does this apply? It means we can understand G-d's use of the word in a different light.

When the word "a-bomb-i-nation" is thundered from the pulpits of the land to describe homosexuality, a wrong paradigm is applied. The paradigm used is: "Well, since G-d, the ultimate source of Truth and Knowledge, says homosexuality is an a-bomb-i-nation, then it must be so, period, end of story."

The Torah tells us, however, to use a different paradigm, that of "the eye of the beholder." If "to-evah" can mean two totally different things, then G-d's pronouncement is not applicable to everyone in every situation; it is not an absolute condemnation, it is a subjective comment.

G-d is saying, "I am the Lord, thy G-d, Who took you out of Egypt so you can become a holy nation. In order to do so, you must be holier than all other nations. If you want to be holy, you have to live up to a higher spiritual standard than anyone else. I am the Most High, and to me, in my role of Highest Holiness, homosexuality is 'Pheh,' a to-evah, and will not get you into the holiest of realms."

Why? It is probable that G-d, from His Most High point of view, sees the Ideal, a world where the "gesin-tes" go together as designed. A "gesin-te" -- which in Yiddish, means someone who is healthy -- is also used as a humorous term for something that "goes into" something else. So, as G-d created them, Man is a physical gesin-te for Woman, i.e. a man physically goes into a woman, sexually, in the prescribed way. To the Ideal, as G-d created them, homosexuality is a perversion of this plan. But this is only from the higher -- highest, -- spiritual plane, as indicated by the Torah fact that ancient Egypt also identified "to-evahs" but homosexuality was certainly not one of them.

As far as ordinary life on Earth, G-d Himself does not tell the ancient Egyptians to cease and desist all homosexual activity because He does not demand they become a Holy Nation, above all others. G-d, therefore tolerates homosexuality in the nations, even as He expresses His distaste for its practice. The word "to-evah" is merely a watchword to provide a signpost for those aspiring to spiritual heights, i.e. the higher you go, the less you want to be involved in such activity. Ultimately, this also applies to heterosexual sex. Moses did not live with his wife Tziporah, and Miriam, his sister, got into trouble for criticizing him for this.

While all this takes care of the non-Jewish homosexuals, but what of those who are Jewish? The Torah specifically gives us a negative commandment to not be homosexual.

First, let's put it in perspective. Yes, we have a commandment to this effect. It is one of many. Is there really a need to single this one out, when Jews are -- chas v'shalom -- violating so many other commandments? Is there a movement afoot to get everyone to keep the Sabbath? Surely, the commandment to keep the Sabbath affects more Jews -- and is more important -- than the commandment to refrain from homosexuality.

And does the latter really apply anymore? Are we really ready to make the Holy Land holy again? The commandment about homosexuality was a "kedoshim tihyu," commandment, i.e. when you go into the Holy Land, as a Holy People, and I dwell amongst you in your Holy Temple, don't practice homosexuality and these other things because they are not compatible with the Most High.

Everybody ready for that? Or are we all busy committing all kinds of sins of our own?

As for those Jews who are homosexual today, remember the True Nature of the Master of the Universe, as revealed in the Torah. Jewish law has provisions for mercy and compassion in such matters.

For those whose sexual orientation is truly homosexual, it is not a punishable sin at all to be gay because G-d understands -- even if some people don't -- that a person cannot change what is beyond their control. "Tinok shenishba," is a principle that a "baby who is taken captive and broken off from Judaism," i.e, raised with no knowledge of it, cannot be held responsible for keeping the Sabbath, that most important of mitzvahs (commandments) or any other mitzvahs.

Nowadays, most theories of homosexuality consider this kind of sexual orientation -- whether innate or forged by the environment, including hormones in the womb -- to be beyond a person's control. Also, it's been found that it's pretty hard to change someone's orientation -- if it's possible at all. These factors support the "tinok shenishba" view, that true homosexuals are blameless in the eyes of G-d, and, therefore, should be blameless in our eyes, too.

Nowadays, when the gay community wants to hold a Pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem, should we be horrified?

Not at all. Take a look at the word, "Pride." Where does it come from? It comes from the centuries of hatred directed at innocently gay people whereby their own self-respect, and respect in the eyes of others was cruelly denied.

We are the ones who have sinned, historically. Like the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Generation of the Flood, we have failed to treat our fellow human beings as human beings. We have demonized the gay community, castigated them, ostracized them, and deprived them of exactly what they march about -- their pride. That's why they call such occasions "Pride" functions. It's time these human beings were treated as such, and for us to put away our senseless, misguided zeal in condemning them.

Religious people who have made a point of hating gay people should strike their fists on their chests and say "Chatati!," "I have sinned!" I have broken the commandment of "love they neighbour as thyself," and even the one for loving G-d because innocent human beings are surely G-d's creatures, as much as anyone else in the universe.

It is not a rebellion against G-d and the Torah for people to be homosexually oriented, if that's their nature. It is a rebellion against G-d and the Torah to despise people who are simply, and innocently, gay. Even to make fun of them, I would think.

I realize that, for a lot of gays, there's a craving for public acceptance of the gay lifestyle as an equal to the heterosexual lifestyle. In this world, at this time, I see no problem with that -- unless you want to be a religious Jew. As Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) says, there's a time for just about anything. This may be the time in secular society for acceptance of gays in marriage expressly because it's not the time of the Messiah. And this is G-d's will. And things will change when the Messiah comes, whenever that will be.

But for now, it is not against the Torah for a secular society to institutionalize gay marriages. G-d did not insist that ancient Egypt change its practices; he just didn't want Jews in the Holy Land where He was present at the time to follow them. That's a huge difference, and that's the Torah.

As far as the penalty in the Torah for homosexuality -- death, we also have to be realistic about what this means. Since the Torah says elsewhere that you need two or three witnesses to convict a person of a capital offense after they've been duly warned about it, it seems impossible for anyone to be executed for homosexuality. As long as the act is done in privacy, it would take a threesome where two of the participants turned against their former mutual lover to testify against him but in so doing would incriminate themselves -- not a likely scenario.

And if people understood that G-d only objects to the public flauting of His preferences rather than the private acts of individuals, we could lay to rest all this nonsense about outing someone and conducting witch hunts. One can only imagine a pair of zealots hiding under a suspect's bed, and leaping out when they determine that there's homosexuality going on, and then testifying against the "offenders" in court. This kind of hateful zealotry is not what G-d wants, if you read the Torah closely. On the other hand, when G-d is back in the room, there will be no public institutionalizing of gay marriages in a Torah state. But this doesn't mean that gays -- if they are still gay, then -- will have to live in fear of being outed. They should be able to live their lifestyle in private without any harrassment from the community.

While religious Jews cannot sanctify a gay marriage because we are trying to keep as much of the Torah as possible, we must learn to accept homosexuality as a private person's orientation.

One question regarding my interpretation that Hashem is really only forbidding the public expression of homosexuality as an accepted lifestyle in a holy society is, what about all the other forbidden sexual liaisons?

Certainly, Hashem does not want any public expression of cohabitation with one's mother-in-law, sister-in-law, or daughter-in-law to be a normative part of a holy society as they may have been in other contemporary cultures. Does this mean, though, that these acts are alright in private, as I claim homosexuality is?

I would think not, and I go back to the fundamental principle that the Torah is Truth. As a document of the highest truth, the Torah cannot possibly deal falsely with any issues. The truth about homosexuality is that it's most likely a sexual orientation beyond a person's control, as demonstrated by established intrinsic personal distinctions between gay and straight people. Science and history tell us that gay people are different, and that's just the way they are.

Sleeping with one's daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, however, is clearly neither historically, nor biologically a form of any kind of orientation other than that of social mores. This kind of behaviour is controllable. Anyone who indulges in it is simply being a pig, in my opinion, and not expressing an inner imperative. I think the Torah as a vessel of Truth understands this distinction even if people may tend to lump all these practices together.

Now, what about the pedophile, a person who has a desire to prey sexually on children? Surely, that nature is also beyond a person's control. Does G-d accept such a person as innocent?

Most certainly.

Unless, of course, he practices pedophilia.

Pedophilia may also be ingrained in a person's nature beyond their control, but unlike homosexuality, the practice of it is not between consenting adult partners. Pedophilia takes advantage of, and emotionally damages, children. Children do not have a corresponding uncontrollable desire to have relations with adults (enelikophilia?). Consenting adults, however, finding physical and emotional fulfillment with each other according to the only nature they know, is a different ballgame entirely.

And what about the prospect of a parade? Well, for one day, there will be some excitement, and then it will be over. Meanwhile, that Shabbos, and on every other Shabbos throughout the year, Jews will drive through the streets of Israel, go shopping, play golf, go swimming, go to the movies, and work. Which should be our greater concern?

And what of the commandment against homosexuality? Perhaps there's an overlap between those people whose orientation is truly gay, and people who cynically indulge in homosexual behaviour as an insult to both society and G-d, sort of an "Up yours" attitude (literally). When the practice of homosexuality becomes a rebellion against G-d, it is worthy of censure and correction.

It is entirely possible, though, that this, too, is an example of "That was then, and this is now," i.e. that the practice of homosexuality in Egypt, and by the Canaanites, was of a different nature than the biological and/or psychological influences we find today. As I outlined in my blog entry on parsha Lech Lecha, our own Talmud tells us that the spiritual makeup of men was different in those days. According to our sages, the inner compulsion to worship idols mysteriously disappeared from our psyches during the time of Ezra, the Scribe, and the Men of the Great Assembly. Perhaps homosexual practice earlier on was tied to this inner drive for idol worship, thus making it imperative for the Children of Israel to overcome it, along with the urge for idol worship, in order to live in the Holy Land.
Moreover, Hashem apparently did not deem it beyond the nation's control to overcome this drive, so it might well differ from the drives we see today.

Those who, today, find themselves inexorably oriented toward homosexual behaviour are not then, by the lights of the Talmud, suffering from this earlier, possibly concomitant urge to worship idols, so their orientation is clearly distinct from spiritual practices. This isolation, in my opinion, makes it more likely a pure issue beyond the individual's control, and possibly changes the character of the act to be less of a to-evah.

For those who still want to overcome their makeup, there are options, like celibacy, but only if the person has monastic, spiritual aspirations. It's not considered a bad thing in Yiddishkheit for a person to want to transcend their physical nature but monasticism, like the Nazirite, is frowned upon to the extent that the Torah says a Nazirite who has abstained from various pleasures including wine for a period of time must bring a sin offering to atone for depriving himself. For the rest, I think the "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy is best. We are all human beings. Let's respect each other as such. Especially in today's world, homosexuality poses no threat to holiness, considering everything else that's going on, and certainly no threat to, say, world peace. Accepting people as equal human beings would contribute a lot to world peace, though, if we can find it in our hearts to do so.

On this issue of tolerance, there is a further note from the Talmud. If a man cannot quell his drive to engage in a forbidden activity, the sages say he should leave the holy community, don a black hood, do what he has to do, and then rejoin the community. And this was in the Holy Land. If they could understand, then, we can understand now.

It must be hard for gays who want to have a relationship with G-d to have the bomb line in the Torah taken out of context and magnified beyond any current relevance. Gay people who love G-d, should feel no problem at all in going to their various houses of worship. Should they hear the standard coarse condemnations of something which is beyond their control, they should realize these comments are not directed at them but at those who have a choice, and do it as a rebellion against G-d's word, or even that it's all about an earlier time which does not pertain today.

Innocent, gay people should have compassion on those speakers who have not yet read my blog, and therefore are not yet fully enlightened as to what is the proper attitude to have towards those who are gay yet legitimate.

One word of caution, though, especially to Jewish gays: I, personally, would not think it wise to establish gay synagogues, although I know there already are some, and I do understand the need to be with like-minded people. Why? Because to do so would appear to be openly flauting G-d's Torah law, notwithstanding all sincere and innocent intentions. "Marus eyin," or appearances, count in Yiddishkheit, and the appearance of a rebellion against G-d's word, even if it isn't an actual cynical revolt, is something to avoid, I think. It's never a good idea to put words into G-d's mouth, i.e. to proclaim, by prominent display, that it's suddenly OK to appear to disobey the commandment against homosexuality.

And then there's the question of being potential role models for impressionable adolescents. Adolescence is a time of confusion at best, when sexual orientation becomes an issue. I think it is possible that some vulnerable adolescents who are really not gay in the innate sense may decide to become gay because they admire some openly gay person, and it seems to be OK with G-d despite the prohibition in the Torah -- as evidenced by a gay synagogue or a gay marriage in a synagogue. This raises the possiblity of a "false-gay" syndrome, someone who for reasons other than his true sexual orientation wants to participate in a homosexual lifestyle. This, the Torah does not want.

The Torah says that we are not allowed to put stumbling blocks in front of the blind.
Thus, we are not allowed to mislead impressionable young religious Jews that it's perfectly OK for them to opt to become gay. It's not. That would be "sheker," a lie.

When G-d says He does not want the people to engage in homosexual behaviour, I believe He is talking to the people as a nation, not as individuals. He does not want the holy nation to give a rubber stamp, and to elevate homosexuality to as public a practice as it was, say, in ancient times in Greece or Egypt etc.

The fine line I think the Torah wants us to walk here, is that one should not condemn a person for being gay, as that could well be his true nature, as made by G-d for him. On the other hand, the holy nation should not encourage a general desirability to practice homosexuality by consecrating gay marriages and having gay synagogues. I'm not being homophobic here; I'm trying to be true to the Torah.

I'd rather gay religious people simply belong to general congregations as equals but I realize that the "significant other factor" presents a problem. I'm sure that gay people who are couples, want the freedom to express their relationship in their house of worship. I think it's a little risky to openly do so in a general congregation (a) because there are bound to be people who don't understand, who would become critical and hostile, and (b) it could be seen as an open rebellion against G-d's word, even if the congregants are all, as I outlined above, innocently gay or tolerant heterosexuals.

I wish I had a better answer to this question of religious acceptance of gays but I think we have to stop short of enshrining homosexuality as a Torah desirable behaviour while at the same time end this stupid condemnation of people who are innocently and innately gay.

As to why does it happen? Why are some people oriented this way? My guess is it has to do with reincarnation, souls who, in addition to transmigrating, also transgender, i.e., a soul who lived as a woman and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially sexually, may have come back as a man this time around, for reasons only known to the Heavenly courts. I think this may have happened to a lot of souls in this past century.

Also, though, some souls may have a history of homosexuality going way back through multiple lives, and this makes it ingrained in them, even as they take on a new birth.

So, theoretically, since these souls desire this kind of expression in life, G-d makes for them the physical circumstances for this to happen (hormones in the womb etc.).

As more proof of G-d's compassion, let us note that G-d actually created a world with creatures whose nature is "tahor," spiritually pure, and those whose nature is "tamei," or spiritually impure. Why would G-d do that? Why would the Source of all spiritual purity create spiritual impurity?

Apart from answers along the lines that non-kosher animals are there to test the mettle of the Jewish people, my answer is that, since our first principle (of many first principles) is that, as Nachum Ish Gamzu states, "It's all Good," we must acknowledge that it must be good for some creatures to be spiritually impure. Why, is anybody's guess, but it's a given, when you believe in Kel Rachum VeChanun, a G-d of infinite compassion and goodness.

My guess? The reclamation of parts of consciousness which proceeded out of the Mind of G-d at Creation, and got far away from G-d, requires that some entities enjoy a life of spiritual impurity on their path back to G-d, i.e. that it's necessary for their spiritual evolution. Or, more simply, that G-d recognizes their need for self-expression, and in His mercy, provides a world for this. Moreover, this is further proof of the relativism of G-d's statement that homosexuality is a to-evah.

G-d speaks of "distasteful" creatures crawling the earth that are not kosher and forbidden for Jews to eat, another example of the Pheh factor. Yet He created them. Furthermore, even as G-d nominally calls them disgusting creatures, do we think that Mr. Sheretz, (Mr. Creepy Crawly Thing), finds Mrs. Sheretz disgusting? Au contraire. They find each other highly attractive. So G-d's statement of distaste is merely from the Highest Perspective of Holiness, and only addressed to the Jews, specifically, and not a blanket condemnation. Likewise, are G-d's statements about homosexuality. We do not have the right to adopt G-d's attitude -- that belongs specifically to Him. We Jews, to whom the Torah is directed, must learn from it but we should not exploit it.

The interesting thing about the nature of all these issues, is that they are sort of academic, as far as the future is concerned, considering the prophecy of the coming of Mashiach, -- the Messiah, -- which we read in the synagogue on the last day of Passover.

When Mashiach comes, according to the prophet Isiah, such holiness will pervade the Temple Mount that natural instincts will be over-ridden. A child will play near a snake and not be bitten, a lion will lie down with a fatling (could be a lamb), and not make lamb chops out of it (the ancient Egyptians would love it); we all know the words. They imply that regardless of natural, instinctive inclination, when G-d chooses to bring it, His Holiness will so pervade the environment that it will imbue us all, and we won't have to worry about our orientations or any tendencies to sin.

This is not to say the run-up to this period will be a breeze. There are so many "tinokim shenishbe-u," people who have been cut off from knowledge of G-d from their childhood, and so many haters of religion and -- chas v'shalom -- G-d Himself, that we may see a return of the harsh types of actions G-d employed with the child/nation of Hebrew slaves who treated Him with great skepticism when He was "in the room." G-d is eventually coming back into the room. That, as I've pointed out, is an entirely different ballgame. If we don't want to be among those on the receiving end of G-d's style of cleaning house, we should all start contemplating the Torah, and, of course, teaching it to our children.

As far as sexual practices go, ultimately, according to Jewish doctrine, in the coming Messianic Age, there will be no urges to do anything contrary to G-d's will. I suppose it's a trade-off. Our wills and instincts will be over-ridden by His. In exchange, we'll all get to experience a transforming, transcendent Spirit running through our entire beings.

So, I guess we should fret and worry about these things while we still can. The day will come when these concerns fade away in the brilliant, warm, all-encompassing light of G-d's Love and Compassion.

The Torah and Homosexuality: Take 2

1999-12-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

I realize that the commentary on Acharei Mot and Kedoshim which addressed the issue of homosexuality in general and amongst Jews ranged farther and wider than that specific topic, and may be too lengthy, involved, and desultory to digest.

Therefore, I am going to try to address this hot button issue again from a more focused point of view. There are no guarantees I won't run off on tangents but if I do, I'll try to save those thoughts for another day and stay relatively strictly (!) on topic. Although I will be reprising many of the points in the afforementioned commentary, I will try (that wonderful word which gives everyone an excuse to fail) to organize my thoughts in a more easy to follow, coherent and logical manner.

That's my intention. So far, I've just got an opening: it's just the beginning.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE TORAH

The Torah says "Man shall not lie with a man [or as NASA rewrote Neil Armstrong's historic statement upon stepping onto the Moon's surface, just "man"] in the manner of lying with a woman. It is an abomination."

As before, in my previous blog entry on this topic, I think it's important to discuss the linguistic impact of the English word "abomination" as opposed to the Hebrew word "to-evah," but I'll get to that, G-d willing, later. Right now, I want to argue context.

The above statement from the Torah has historically been misinterpreted, in my opinion, to be a blanket condemnation of all people who are homosexual. It has made them into pariahs in supposedly "G-d fearing" societies.

But in condemning all homosexuals, and painting them all as sinners, these particular interpreters of the Torah have done a great disservice to humanity and to the Torah itself, not to mention, to G-d Himself. In addition to misquoting the intentions of the Master of the Universe, they have, historically, done further damage by creating an unnecessary tension and animus between the gay people in society and G-d.

Gay people have, because of the misinterpretation of the Torah on the part of religious leaders, inexorably been led to believe that G-d -- G-d forbid -- hates them. They have been left to their own devices to mount an ego defense against this irrational so-called hatred on the part of the Master of the Universe.

How would you deal with that? Suppose someone came to you and said "I have it on good authority that the Creator hates you."

Many people would respond, "Well, the 'heck' with the Creator, then." In other words, alienation, denial and defensiveness in order to preserve ego integrity in the face of an unjust onslaught.

But these religious leaders who vilify homosexuality have made a judgement of homosexuals based on a statement in the Torah for which they have failed to see the proper context, and have consequently created a long trail of error on the subject. In other words, the statement, taken out of context, on its own, is not what it seems to be upon superficial reading.

What do you mean, you say? It's there in black and white. It's unambiguous. There's no mistaking the meaning. Context can have nothing to do with it.

Here we have to consider the distinction between the simple and the simplistic.

"Simple" is good, whole, pure, complete. The Torah says Jacob was an "ish tam," a "simple man," as he was growing up but our sages teach us that this meant he was fully developed morally, and not lacking any faculties as he studied the Torah in its then current form.

"Simplistic," on the other hand, is a weak, fraudulent attempt to impute that something is simple by ignoring the whole of an issue, and latching on only to a part of it, and pretending that this part is the whole, like our one statement, out of context, regarding homosexuality. People take the statement on its face and argue that it's so unequivocal that there's no possible mistaking G-d's intentions here, that homosexuality is a sin.

Oh, really? Well, it's clear to me from the greater context of the Torah that homosexuality is not a sin, certainly not in our world.

How can context change the apparent meaning of the Torah?

First, we need a demonstration of the importance of context, which is basically any information extrinsic and intrinsic to a statement which may modify our understanding of it.

How about let's imagine there's a series of sentences in the Torah which goes like this:

"Thou shalt not drink milk. Thou shalt not eat cheese. Thou shalt not eat yoghurt. Thou shalt not put cream in thy coffee."

Oops. There goes the whole dairy industry. Bessie? Forget the milk, you're going to be a one-time source for filet mignon, other choice -- and not so choice -- cuts, maybe a dozen baseballs, some shoes and a winter jacket. That's a l-o-o-w down thing to do to a milk cow, you say? Sorry. The Torah says. Clearly.

Ah, but what if, just before the above imagined statements, the Torah said this:

"After you shall eat meat, you shall make a demarcation between the meat and any dairy products. You will wait until the meat has been fully digested. For a period of six hours, or into the fifth hour for some, or if you're a certain kind of European Jew, three hours, you shall not have any dairy products."

Then, say the Torah followed with our imagined statement:

"Thou shalt not drink milk. Thou shalt not eat cheese. Thou shalt not eat yoghurt. Thou shalt not put cream in thy coffee."

As we can clearly see, in context, the passage takes on a completely different meaning. We are not forbidden dairy products across the board, only in certain circumstances.

Thus it is with the statement in the Torah about homosexuality, if you add in the proper context from the Torah.

What context, you ask? Where is any context which qualifies the passage in question as to mean anything other than it seems to mean on the face of it? It's in a list of things not to do, mitzvahs known as "lo-ta-a-se."

Actually, there are many contexts in the Torah which bear directly and indirectly on this statement regarding homosexuality. There is a telescoping progression of contexts, all of which mitigate the apparent meaning of the statement in question.

Let's zoom out to the widest angle of perspective, and view the first context.

The first context involves who is the intended recipient of Torah law, i.e exactly who is the Torah talking to? Does the Torah address all people everywhere, or does it specifically and exclusively focus and direct its remarks to the Jews, hence the term, Chosen People?

Almost all religious Jews agree (a rarity) that the commandments in the Torah are exclusively addressed to the Jews -- and no-one else -- with the exceptions of the Seven Commandments of the Sons of Noach.

To wit, a convert-in-training to Judaism who has not graduated into full-fledged Jewish status, may not fully keep the Sabbath even as they learn how to do so. They must violate the rules of the Sabbath by striking a match, turning on a light etc. so as not to incur a Heavenly penalty for impinging on the exclusive spiritual territory of the Jewish people, i.e. the laws of the Torah.

So, from our first context, we see that it is not the purpose of the Torah to prohibit non-Jews from engaging in homosexual behaviour because this commandment is not addressed to the world at large at all. It is, in fact, in a chapter (parsha) dealing with exactly how the Hebrew nation is to be different than other nations in order to be holy. The Jews, by following the Torah, are to be a Holy People, a testament to G-d Above. Other nations need not apply.

Nevertheless, of the 613 commandments, as counted by Maimonides, which Jews must follow, there are seven which all peoples of the world are supposed to observe. Some will say that the prohibition against homosexuality is one of these. To me, such a point of view overzealously expands on what the nations of the world are supposed to observe.

I hope to dispense with this argument relatively quickly. The notion that there are seven basic commandments which all peoples are supposed to observe is exactly that: there are seven such commandments, not thirty or forty or more. When these are listed, they include understanding that G-d is above, require the establishment of courts, prohibit the tearing a limb from a living animal, incest, murder, kidnapping and holding for ransom, and making false testimony.

Expanding on any of these commandments, is, in my opinion, not an option. Yet, we have seen all kinds of zealous people, Jewish and non-Jewish, add meanings to these which, in my opinion, are simply not warranted. I am going to look up the Gemara (Talmud) on this, but the question of homosexuality comes from the prohibition against incest, called "giluy arayot," or "the uncovering of nakedness."

In the Torah, it is crystal clear that "giluy arayot" pertains to forbidden liaisons within one's extended family, i.e., a man should not uncover the nakedness of his mother, sister, step-mother, daughter, daughter-in-law etc. Somehow -- and I will check it out -- this commandment was thought to be prescribed to other nations as well.

I know it goes against most thinking but I would question that. It seems to me that the proscription against incest is given emphatically to the Children of Israel as a means of being holier than other peoples, in which case, other peoples would not be prohibited by G-d from doing this, even though it is distasteful to G-d, and, in fact, would have to do it, in order for the Children of Israel to be different!

And, even if we assert that incest is prohibited for all peoples, there is no justification for tacking on one's favourite sexual pet peeve, and saying it also comes under incest. This particular group of laws in the Torah is limited to one's extended family. The only possible allusion to homosexuality is that one is told not to uncover their father's nakedness, however, this is interpreted universally as being a proxy nakedness, occurring when one uncovers the nakedness of one's father's wife, not literally, one's father's.

So, to call incest by the wider name of "sexual transgression," is a falsehood propogated by, in my opinion, overzealous do-gooders, and I say this, no matter how high and mighty they were. There were seven Noahide laws. There is no justification for expanding them into more, no matter how "well-meaning" our zealous commentators are.

My guiding principle in all of this is my rock-hard faith that the Torah is truth, or "emet," in Hebrew. If there seems to be something false or wrong in the Torah, I believe it's because we do not understand the Torah correctly.

And so, I cannot willy-nilly add homosexuality to the concept of incest. This would be false, and the Torah would have none of it. Along this line, I could also not possibly believe that the Torah tells us to hate and ostracize the gay community or to be angry with them. This would be a falsehood improperly ascribed to the Torah.

Why? Because the Torah is truth, and scientific, sociological and historical truth have shown us that sexual orientation is, for the most part, not the "fault" of the person, and not a matter of choice.

Throughout the history of the human race, there has always been a segment of the population which is made up of gay people. It's, therefore, actually, quite natural, as I see it.

We have a golden principle in Judaism, that a person cannot be judged as a sinner if their actions are not their fault, i.e. if they were brought up not to keep the Sabbath etc. It's called "tinok shenishba," or "a baby which was taken captive, i.e., spirited away from the opportunity to grow up in observant Judaism."

So, if we accept that the Torah operates on truth, then the Torah knows that those who are truly homosexual have no choice in the matter, and, like the innocent child raised away from observant Judaism, are not sinners at all, and must not be condemned.

As for sincere Christians who believe that their view of G-d's religion supersedes mine, and encompasses the proscription against homosexuality, I can only say that I believe the Torah and Judaism are 100% complete as they are, and do not require anything "new."

And, as stated above, I do not believe the Torah is addressed to anyone but the Jewish people -- whom G-d has not abandoned and replaced.

So, I'm sorry, dear preachers, I do not see any justification in the Torah for you to consider homosexuality a sin amongst non-Jews. The statement in the Torah -- yet to be placed in context regarding the Jewish people -- does not apply to gentiles. So, please, cool your jets.

What I believe, by the way, is that every great religion is true. I believe G-d has given teachings to different peoples which are appropriate for them, hence they are all true.

In his mercy, G-d has provided. What is right for one culture or population is not necessarily what another needs. Therefore, it's tricky to take from the Jewish tradition -- the Torah -- and try to apply it to everyone. This, in fact, shouldn't be done.

to be continued

G-d is Not Enough

1999-12-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

Notes:

Korach, Bilam, Zimri