tradition and innovation

(Thoughts inspired by my rabbi, who told the two stories here at the tikkun.)

It is said that when the Ba'al Shem Tov (founder of Chasidism) faced a difficult problem and sought divine help, he went to a particular place in the forest, built a fire in a special way, and said a special prayer, and his prayer was answered. Later his student, the Magid, faced a similar problem, but when he went to the place he said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, but I have come to the place and I know the prayer", and his prayer was answered. His student went to the woods and said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, and I do not know the prayer, but I have come to the place", and his prayer was answered. Finally, his student sat at his desk and said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, and I do not know the prayer, and I do not know the place, but I know the story" -- and his prayer, too, was answered.

It's a quaint story, but I hesitate to take a lesson from it. If I don't know, isn't it my obligation to learn? Was there no one alive who could tell the Magid how to build the fire, or tell the Magid's student the prayer, or tell the student's student the place? We make the best of things when knowledge has been lost, but that doesn't absolve us from trying to recover it if we can.

But on the other hand, we should also not presume that there is one correct way to do things, least of all one correct way to approach God. Maybe a heartfelt prayer is more important than the precise words used by your master. Maybe the student should not try to be the Ba'al Shem Tov but should, instead, be the best Magid he can be. Maybe that is what God wants from us.

Another story: when Reb Zusia grew old, he told his students that he feared his impending death. They asked why he should fear when he had achieved so much. But, Reb Zusia said, God will not ask me "why weren't you as great as Moshe?", or "why weren't you as great as Avraham?"; rather, he will ask "why weren't you as great as Zusia?", and I will not know what to say.

We have conflicting tasks. We must work to keep knowledge alive, but we must not just cling to that and say we're done. We have to study not only the past but ourselves; we have to both preserve and innovate, and we have to figure out how to balance the two, to know when to use the Ba'al Shem Tov's prayer and when to use our own.

Aseret HaDibrot

On Shavuot we read the Aseret HaDibrot, the ten utterances (or ten commandments, or ten words -- take your pick of translations), from the book of Exodus. My rabbi asked at the tikkun: which is the most important? (Actually, he asked us to rank them, but he didn't give us the several days necessary for that discussion. :-) )

These ten fall into two broad groups, ones governing our interactions with God and ones governing our interactions with other people. How could one choose between those groups? You can't; they're both critically important to being a committed Jew.

It is, of course, possible to be a good person without the God-centered ones, and much of what's on that latter list is stuff we all broadly agree on anyway -- don't murder, don't steal, don't bear false witness, People might haggle over adultery, coveting, and honoring parents. One approach is to say that honoring God does no good if we don't treat each other fairly ("would that they ignored Me completely but kept my torah"); another is to focus on the stuff we don't already all agree on.

I decided to re-interpret the question, in fine talmudic tradition. :-) Are some of these ten derivable from others? That would create second-order dibrot, ones you get for free based on others. Among the people-centered ones, I could argue that (at least) murder, stealing, adultery, and false witness are consequences of coveting, so the key one there is the last. (Yes, sometimes people murder not for material gain but out of jealousy or vengeance or some other emotion. But don't we, in those cases, choose to nurture those negative feelings, to hold onto them and not let them go, the way some people go out of their way to be offended or downtrodden? Isn't that a form, or at least a cousin, of coveting?)

On the God side, I think everything derives from the first -- Anochi Adonai Elohecha, I am your God (who brought you out of Egypt etc). (For my Christian readers: we divide up the commandments differently than you do; I found a helpful comparison of the different versions here.) Interestingly, when we looked at some commentaries on this, it seemed that most folks focus on the first two words -- "I am God" -- arguing that God is all-powerful and did good things for you, so he has the authority to command. (Some soften that.) I, on the other hand, gravitate immediately to the possessive Elohecha -- it's not just that there's this divine being out there, but that this is our God, the one we're in a covenant with. I'm not obligated to God because he can smite me, though that could make obedience seem like a good idea; I'm obligated to God because I accepted that obligation by affirming the covenant. Therefore, I am obligated to do my best to understand what God wants of me, in balance with all the other factors that affect my behavior (like treating other people well). Because we ascribe benevolence to God there's a good chance that treating other people well will line up with what God wants, and if it doesn't we have some hard choices, but no one ever said this would be easy.

For me, if God isn't central then there is no commander, so the rest of it boils down to independently-derived ethics and interpersonal expedience. But I don't want to stop with just the ethics I could derive on my own, important as those are; I am willing to do the stuff I don't necessarily understand, like Shabbat, because God seems to want that.