cellio | blessings: on whose authority?

This isn't the first time I've wondered about this, but the first relevant Torah portion just came around again so it's now fresh.

(For those following along, we're in Parsha Toldot, Gen 25:19 - 28:9.)

Rivka and Yaakov engage in a bit of trickery to enable Yaakov to "steal" Esav's blessing from Yitzchak. (Yaakov disguises himself as Esav, Yitzchak blesses him as the first-born, and then Esav shows up and says "hey, where's my blessing?".) Later, we will see Yaakov bless all of *his* children. And the content of these blessings is about future fortunes -- who rules over whom, who will have plentiful harvests, who will receive riches, and so on.

There's just one problem with all of this: why do *men* have the power to hand out these blessings? Blessings of this sort are in God's jurisdiction, not man's. *We* can't control who will be rich vs. poor, satisfied vs. hungry, and so on. At best, Yitzchak is making a *prayer* for Yaakov's future (and so on for the others who hand out blessings in the Torah).

The author of one of the parsha commentaries I read every week (Rabbi Mordecai Kamenetzky) just sent his out for this week, and he talked about the blessings. (Not on this point -- something else about the whole exchange.) So I took the opportunity to write and ask about this.

His response was interesting: just as we need physical additives for some aspects of life (God makes the grain but *we* make the bread -- we have to add our work), we also need spiritual additives (prayer augments God's actions). In other words (this is me talking now, not the rabbi), we can through our actions enhance God's actions, and our participation is at least sometimes actually *necessary*. We can't just sit back and wait for God to bail us out or whatever.

This resonates. A few years back when I was just starting to "get religion", it felt as if God was trying to get my attention but it would have stopped if I hadn't then turned around and reached out to Him. My active participation was necessary to build the relationship that eventually grew from those first tentative steps (when I wasn't even sure God existed).

And as an aside, rabbis who answer email from random strangers within minutes are pretty darn cool. :-)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That is one of the better descriptions of why we need prayer that I've read in quite a while.

This may be vaguely related to something I stumbled across recently, which is the cooperative method of free will implementation. Basically it works like this:
Everyone has a function that determines what they'd do in all possible circumstances--this is free will, that the creature picks the possible decisions, limiting possible outcomes to the range of this function. God simulates this perfectly using omniscience, to the extent that it is identical to the real thing. God then chooses a circumstance, usually from within those possible under natural law (which restricts the function's domain), such that a certain outcome occurs.
Since one man's actions are another's circumstances (plus or minus an inspiration modifier), the amount of God's control is further limited, mostly down to presence or absence of inspiration. So, there would seem to exist some number of things which God cannot do without a human's consent, or without breaking the laws of the universe.
Presumably this consent would imply action, thus providing the reference to Monica's original post that makes this comment pseudo-germane rather than commpletely off-topic. :P

Does this sound overly weird?

This actually makes sense to me. I don't think I've ever heard it expressed "mathematically" before, but it works.

Basically, it all boils down to the point reiterated in several cultures. The American Indian saying, "Call on God, but row away from the rocks," is one good example. Here's the joke versions of the lesson, one Christian and the other Jewish in origin.

A priest sailing across the ocean falls overboard in a choppy sea. He prays to God to save him. Soon, a boat comes by, and the Captain offers to pull him aboard. The priest declines saying that God will save him. Later, a helicopter swings by and offers to rescue him. The priest declines again, saying the same thing. Eventually, of course, he tires and drowns. At the throne of God, the priests asks why God did not save him. God says, "I sent you a boat and helicopter, what else did you want?"

Max prays to God hoping to win the lottery. He doesn't win it the first year, nor the second year he prays even harder, nor the third. Finally, he curses God, demanding why He has not answered his prayer. A voice from Heaven resounds, "Max, meet me halfway. Buy a ticket."

I agree with the "call on God but row away from the shore" approach (and have always enjoyed those two stories). This seems, from the plain text, to be a slightly different situation, though; we're told that Yitzchak is "blessing" his sons (and later Yaakov), but blessing seems to me to be God's sole right and power, not Yitzchak's. If we interpret it as prayer rather than blessing, though, it's much less presumptuous. And the whole idea of us being in partnership with God is important, and reiterated in many places by the sages.

I get the daily Torah reading mailed to me, so I was also thinking a great deal about this issue. I typically approach the cultural mysogyny with the eye of history (that's the way that it was in their culture, but a great deal of time has passed), and that seems to clear up about half of my problems with it.

I agree with your assertion that people have to take an active role in their relationship with their deity. I have often heard it likened to a marriage; if one partner stops working, the marriage can survive, but with no closeness and no deep love.

This also reminds me of one of my favourite jokes: A man is trapped on his roof during a flood and prays to G-d to save him. A man in a row boat comes by and offers to take the man to safety, and the man sends him away saying, "I have prayed, and G-d will save me." A couple of hours later, the waters have risen even further and another man in a boat comes by and offers to take him to safety. The man on the roof again sends away the boat saying, "G-d will save me." More time passes, and the water is now up to the man's waist, and the undertow is threatening to drag him under. A helicopter passes overhead and drops its ladder for the man to climb to safety. The man ignores the ladder, and the helicopter flys off. Finally, the man is swept away by the flood, and drowns. When he gets to heaven, he is weeping and wringing his hands, "G-d, G-d, I prayed to you to save me, I believed in your immense power and ability to pull me from that terrible flood, and still you let me die. Why? Why?" At that moment, a booming voice answered, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what else did you want?"

I get the daily Torah reading mailed to me

Daily and not weekly? What, one aliyah per day? That could work reasonably well. (When the Torah is read on Shabbat, the reading is broken into seven sections, colloquially called aliyot.)

If this is email, could you send me a pointer to the relevant mailing list? I'd kind of like to build up an electronic, plain-text copy.

Yes, it's one aliyah per day, so it's easy to reflect on each of them seperately over time, rather than all at once. I always disliked not being able to reflect on the readings at church on Sundays and have my own feelings on it/lessons from it. Fortunately, my church now publishes the monthly readings (the whole denomination has the same readings from week to week). My problem is that because of the structure, there really isn't anyone to answer questions (there is Bible Study, but it's typically not with a pastor or anyone with a totally solid religious background. In my last Bible Study, I was the only person who had not only read the whole Bible, but had taken Theology classes), the pastor typically does the Sermon on his/her interperetation of the passage. I call it the "telling method" as opposed to the "teaching method" of preaching.

Its something that I signed up for with beliefnet.com. I like having to take that time in the morning to reflect on that day's reading. Just go to www.beliefnet.com and create an account. Then sign up for the reading.

I also recommend beliefnet in general. It's a good place to connect with people that share your faith, and a good place to ask questions and have good conversations about religion. Not to mention, the awesome quizzes :-)

Sorry about the novella......

Thanks for the info. Sounds like something I should go take a look at.

If you want a steady stream of insightful commentaries on the weekly parsha, I can hook you up. :-) (Or, actually, start by going to torah.org and following the "torah portion" link.) Of course, they won't be from a Christian perspective. :-)

blessings: on whose authority?

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