Monica

Bo (the last plague)

2024-02-19T03:04:17Z

I gave a d'var torah a couple weeks ago on shortish notice and forgot to post it here. This is for Bo, the parsha that contains the last three plagues and the actual exodus from Egypt.

The pattern is familiar: Moshe goes to Paro to demand freedom, Paro refuses, Moshe announces the next plague, and God carries it out. Paro says he's sorry and asks for relief, God lifts the plague, and then Paro hardens his heart and we start all over again. There's no change; the oppression never seems to end.

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky points out that for most of the plagues these negotiations are strained but civil. Moshe and Paro are on opposite sides of an argument, but nobody is throwing tantrums as far as we can tell. But their last meeting is different: after telling Paro what is to come, the torah tells us that Moshe went out from Paro in hot anger.

Was he angry about Paro's stubborn refusal to let the people go? That doesn't seem likely; they've had that well-worn exchange many times before. No, what is different this time is the cost of Paro's recalcitrance.

The first nine plagues caused extensive damage to Mitzrayim, to the point where even Paro's advisors are urging him to give up because Egypt is surely lost. The first nine plagues destroyed crops and livestock, caused injury and sickness, and massively inconvenienced people -- but they weren't fatal to anyone who heeded the warnings to come in out of the hailstorm.

The last plague is different: there is an unavoidable human cost. The last plague targets based on who you are, not on what wrongs you did, and it kills. It's not individual punishment; it's a tax on those living in Egypt. Surely not all of the dead deserved it, even in a society with many evildoers and oppressors.

God does not want the death of sinners, our prophets tell us, but that they should repent. God wouldn't be sending this last plague if there were an alternative. Moshe sees this, Rabbi Kamenetzky points out, and it fills him with anger at the Paro who causes widespread death. This could have been avoided. These deaths are Paro's fault.

But wait, one might say -- it is God who sends this plague, and thus God could avert this widespread loss of human life. It's God's fault, not Paro's, right?

My father, of blessed memory, taught me many things. One of them is that we solve problems with words, not with fists. Another of them is that giving bullies what they demand does not end the bullying. There was a kid in my grade who, starting in kindergarten, was physically abusive to me, and in the many parental conferences that followed, his parents told my parents that boys will be boys and if I didn't react he would probably stop. My father said that was unacceptable. This went on for years, until I was given permission to respond. The bullying ended the day I decked that kid with my large-print dictionary. We don't solve problems with violence, except that sometimes we have to.

I hit the kid; did that make it my fault he got hurt? Absolutely not, according to me, my parents, and the school principal. Lesser interventions had failed. Now my attack didn't do permanent damage, didn't even break his nose -- nothing like the last plague in that regard. But the principle is the same: the oppressor is culpable for the consequences of his behavior. The blood of the victims of collateral damage is on the hands of the evildoers who refuse to resolve conflicts peacefully.

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer from Hadar points out a surprising passage near the end of the parsha, after the final plague, when Paro asks Moshe and Aharon to pray for him. Say what now? The Paro who has done so much damage asks his victims to pray for his welfare? Why would they do that?

Rabbi Kaunfer points out a rabbinic tradition that Paro did not die at the Sea of Reeds with his army. Through the midrashic principle of the conservation of biblical personalities (that's not Rabbi Kaunfer's label), Paro went on to become the king of Nineveh. When Yonah comes to Nineveh to announce their impending destruction, it is the king who asks for forgiveness and leads his nation in teshuva to avert the decree.

Perhaps Moshe and Aharon did pray for Paro like he asked. More specifically, perhaps they prayed that he repent and do teshuva, like we pray our enemies will do in the daily Amidah. That's a prayer I can get behind -- that oppressors big and small soften their hearts, stop doing harm, and turn toward the right path. Ken y'hi ratzono.

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Shabbat Shuva (yesterday's d'var torah)

2023-09-24T19:08:30Z

The Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of returning, and it's customary for the d'var torah or sermon to focus on the themes of the season. This is the d'var torah I gave in our minyan yesterday.

Early in the pandemic, when grocery-store shelves were sometimes empty, I started growing a few things to see if I could produce at least a little of my own food. I've always had kind of a brown thumb, but I'd managed to not kill a basil plant that had come in a farm-share box the previous year, so I was game to try.

I didn't grow a lot – more herbs than vegetables – but the cherry tomatoes I planted were extremely bountiful. Encouraged by that success, I planted more. Last year I found myself fighting unknown critters -- I got a few of the tomatoes but I found more that were half-eaten on the ground. Netting didn't help. Tabasco sauce didn't help. So this year I tried a different variety and a different location.

I got to keep three tomatoes. On the day I was going to harvest six more -- they'd been almost ready the previous day -- I found that something had eaten all the tomatoes and most of the leaves besides. The plant looked dead. I left the dejected remains in the pot for the end-of-season cleanup and stopped watering it.

A couple weeks ago I was pruning some other plants and cut away all the dead stems on that plant while I was at it. Then an amazing thing happened: it put out new shoots, then new leaves, and this week, three small tomatoes. That plant stood up to attack followed by neglect and came back strong despite it all.

During the high holy days we focus a lot on our own actions and the things we have done wrong. We focus on making amends for our mistakes, on doing teshuva and turning in a better direction for the coming year. We try to make things right with the people we've hurt. These are all critical things to focus on, and I don't have much to add that hasn't been said hundreds of times before.

Instead, today I want to talk about being on the other side -- about being the one who has been hurt. We know what to do when those who hurt us do teshuva, but what about when they don't? Teshuva is hard, and we know it won't always come.

( Read more... )

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B'reishit: generations

2022-10-23T19:17:41Z

D'var torah given in the minyan yesterday morning.

Ten generations.

At the beginning of this parsha, God created humanity as the pinnacle of creation, and declared it tov meod -- very good. Before even the first Shabbat, Adam had transgressed the divine will and been expelled from the garden, but that didn't merit further destruction. Adam and Chava produced children and their descendants began to fill the earth, as commanded. It might not have been tov meodany more, but it was apparently still ok with God.

Ten generations later, at the end of this same parsha, things have descended to the point where God is ready to blot it all out. The world had become corrupt and lawless, filled with wickedness and violence.

Ten generations isn't a lot. Many of us are blessed to have known three or four generations of our families, maybe more. As a child I met a great-grandparent and my niece now has a child -- that's six. It's hard to imagine that the distance from my grandparents to my grand-niece spans half the distance from tov meod to unredeemable evil.

And yet... it's been roughly ten generations since the founding of the United States. The US didn't start out as tov meod -- slavery was normal, native peoples were badly mistreated, and sexism and racism were the way of the world. But the people of that generation also pursued values we would call at least tov: basic freedoms of speech and assembly and religion and personal autonomy, protections from government abuses, and fostering a society where people could live securely and pursue happiness.

Ten generations later, how are we doing? We've made progress in some areas, but we've also done a lot of harm. We've pursued the destruction of the planet we were given to care for, there is widespread corruption and injustice from local jurisdictions all the way up to the international level, crusaders on both the left and the right seek to blot out perspectives they disagree with, and we've become a polarized, combative, and intolerant society. I'm going to focus on this last one, both because it's the one we can do the most about at an individual level and because I want to avoid the appearance of political advocacy in a tax-exempt synagogue right before an election.

Within just a single generation, we've become more polarized, more isolated in our bubbles, and more certain that we are right and anybody who doesn't agree with us completely is evil. We could blame social media for filtering what we see, but aren't we complicit? There was Internet before Twitter and there was mass media before the Internet, and we've always tended to gravitate toward people like us, haven't we? And yet, we used to more easily have civil conversations with people we disagreed with; we used to be better at respectful discourse and its give-and-take. Going farther back, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed with each other on almost everything, yet they found common ground in the study hall, maintained friendships, and intermarried. They taught each other's positions, not just their own, to their students. They disagreed, vehemently, without being disagreeable.

Very few issues in our society are cut-and-dried. We can't stay in echo chambers, only hearing perspectives we already agree with, and expect to get anywhere. We need to be open to diversity. Diversity means people and ideas that aren't exactly like us. Diversity means complexity. It means setting aside the goal of "winning" in favor of the goal of understanding the human beings we're interacting with. It means having civil conversations that are nuanced and complex. It means being open to new ideas. It means asking questions rather than jumping to the conclusions that would be most convenient for us, like "he's a bigot" or "she hates America" or "you're not capable of understanding". The results won't align completely with any side's talking points, but they just might help us move forward together constructively.

Try it. Try having a conversation with someone who disagrees with you on something. It doesn't have to be something extreme and emotional.
Try asking the person to explain the reasoning.
Try asking questions.
Try to understand, and resist the urge to prepare your counter-arguments while half-listening for keywords to pounce on.
Assume your conversational partner is as principled, ethical, and thoughtful as you are.
Assume good intentions.
See how long you can keep it up. Then ask yourself: based on what I've learned, do I need to re-evaluate anything in my own thinking?

It's hard, isn't it? But what's the alternative? Can we afford to continue our descent? What comes after "uncivil"? How many generations do we have before our society is unredeemable?

Ten generations of social decay, hatred, and violence led from Adam to Noach. But that wasn't the end. After the flood, another ten generations led from Noach to Avraham. After sinking to the depths of evil, society climbed back toward tov.

Our society hasn't sunk as far as Noach's generation -- yet. We do not need to reach bottom, when only the divine promise prevents the heavens and the depths opening up again, in order to start climbing back up. At Yom Kippur we confessed to many sins including sinat chinam, baseless hatred, and we also said that we can return from our errors. We can turn from ways that are uncivil or worse – individually, one interaction at a time. We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free from trying. Let's see how far we can get together.

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Ki Tisa: haftarah

2022-02-21T22:09:39Z

Shabbat's torah portion was Ki Tisa, which includes the episode of the golden calf. For those who don't know, each torah portion has an associated haftarah from some other part of the Hebrew bible that is thematically connected (because Roman persecution, originally). The haftarah for Ki Tisa is the passage from 1 Kings 18 about Eliyahu and the prophets of Ba'al on Mount Carmel.

I gave approximately the following introduction before reading the haftarah on Saturday.

There is a famous story in the talmud where one rabbi is arguing against all of the others on a point of law. When he can't convince them with logic, he starts calling on miraculous testimony: if I'm right let that tree prove it, he says, and the tree gets up and walks across the courtyard. The rabbis respond: we don't learn law from trees. Ok, if I'm right then let that stream prove it, and the stream runs backwards. We don't learn law from streams, they answer. Finally a voice from heaven confirms he's right -- and the rabbis answer, lo bashamayim hi, the torah is not in heaven. That is, God gave us the torah and the responsibility to interpret it, and we don't listen to heavenly voices.

The story is funny (and on Saturday most people laughed). Or rather, it's funny if you stop there, which most tellings do. But if you keep reading, the story takes a darker turn; this argument leads to much death and destruction. And if you back up to the mishna that prompted all this discussion in the g'mara, you'll find there's a larger point to the story. It's not really about an oven.

The story of Eliyahu on Mount Carmel makes me think of this talmudic story. We love the Eliyahu story, full of daring and chutzpah and the defeat of Ba'al and the people finally seeming to acknowledge God. It's a great story! But when we read haftarot, excerpts from the rest of Tanakh, it's easy to miss context.

The next thing that happens after this is that Eliyahu kills the 450 prophets of Ba'al, the bad king's bad wife threatens him, and he flees into the wilderness and a different haftarah. Eliyahu's in the wilderness, God sends a messenger to feed him so he won't die, and he finds his way to the cave where God asks him: why are you here, Eliyahu? Eliyahu answers that he has been zealous for God, the people have rejected God and slain all the prophets, and they want to kill him too. God then sends an earthquake (but God was not in the earthquake), a fire (but God wasn't there either), and a wind (ditto), and finally Eliyahu finds God in the still small voice.

God then asks again, why are you here Eliyahu? And Eliyahu gives the exact same answer, word for word. God tells him to go back and appoint Elisha as his successor (among other things).

Eliyahu doesn't exit the story at this point; he's still around as a prophet. But it feels to me like this encounter was a pivotal moment, set in motion by the showdown with Ba'al. It feels to me like Eliyahu was supposed to learn something from the encounter, about how the still small voice can be more powerful than the earthquake and fire -- that these encounters were supposed to change Eliyahu. I would expect a changed Eliyahu to give a different answer the second time God asked the question. It feels like a missed opportunity for a stronger relationship with God -- like Eliyahu failed a test.

I still love the story of Mount Carmel, but knowing what comes after casts the story in a different light for me, like reading on in the talmud changed my understanding of the rabbis and the voice from heaven.

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Ha'azinu / Shabbat Shuva 5781

2020-09-27T17:32:05Z

Yesterday's d'var torah for the minyan (recorded in advance):

Ha'azinu consists primarily of Moshe's final poem, recited to the people before he ascends the mountain to see the land and die.

The language is very different from what I'm used to in the torah. It is not the language of events and facts and commands; it is the poetry of evocative images and allegory. It resembles the writings of the prophets -- which makes sense, as Moshe was a prophet too and these are his final words. Prophets give us words of admonition and words of comfort, and Moshe here does both.

The plain reading, the p'shat, of this text is a recounting of Yisreal's relationship with God. It's mostly focused on the negative -- God did all these good things and Israel rebelled and worshipped false gods and so on, and God withdrew. While it's mostly written in the past tense, it also predicts future events. And in the end there is a nechemta, a consolation -- that if the people return from those evil ways, God will be there for them. This was the case for the people Moshe was speaking to -- they were redeemed from the sins of their parents and granted entry into the land of Israel.

It seems possible to read this on another level, too. Moshe is at the end of a long life, the last third of which has been filled with contention and challenges. He, too, rebelled against God and cried out at the apparent unfairness of the punishment he received. But here, at the very end, it is clear that he has accepted God's authority, praising Tzur Yisrael, the Rock of Israel, repeatedly. He has returned to God, and when he dies God Himself takes Moshe's final breath with a kiss.

We usually read this portion on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, when we too are focused on reflection of the past and aspirations for the future. We are especially challenged this year, when our our world, our country, our society, and perhaps our personal lives have seen many challenges. We face plague, violence, turmoil, corruption from our national leaders, personal losses, fear and uncertainty. But while we pray and confess in the plural, Shabbat Shuva and the whole season of repentance really call on us to take a personal accounting and not just a societal one.

There are two things I think are important about that personal accounting. The first is that it's important to look in both directions. We look back on the past year, on places where we missed the mark, and we try to make amends for the damage we've caused, try to set things right, seek and grant forgiveness. It's a mix of depressing, embarrassing, and cleansing. Sometimes we've strayed from each other and strayed from God. But then we look ahead -- teshuva is about returning to the right path, so what will we do differently in the coming year? What will we be more careful of? What hazards do we now know are waiting to trip us up so we should look out for them? What will we learn from the past, and how will we apply it?

The second thing is that we don't have to do it all at once. If we can repair one relationship, make amends for one thing we've done wrong, accept amends and forgive one person who has wronged us, that is progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Our Yom Kippur liturgy includes a blanket forgiveness clause where we say that we forgive people who have wronged us, even if they didn't ask like they're required to. When I say that passage, I quietly insert "except...". There are a few people who have wronged me severely -- I'm not talking about passing slights here -- and until they do teshuva then no, I do not forgive them. I'm not holding a grudge; I'm just waiting for them to make amends. There were five people on that list last year, people I was waiting to see positive change from, sometimes for years, and this year I was able to remove three of them. It feels great to be able to make those repairs, which require both parties to help. Unfortunately there are additions to my list this year, all rooted in a single evil, hurtful source, but maybe someday they, too, will see the harm they're doing and want to fix it. It's not under my control, so there's no point in focusing on it and letting it pull me down.

Ha'azinu is, on its face, about Yisrael's failings and teshuva, its path. On another level, it's about Moshe's path too. And maybe on yet another level it's about us, our path. Looking back we see failures and rebellion and wrongs done and received -- but looking ahead, we see return and renewed relationships.

Israel returned, and will again in the future. Moshe returned. May we also be able to return, one step at a time.

Adapted and reposted on Judaism Codidact.

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Ha'azinu

2018-10-04T02:59:17Z

I gave approximately this d'var torah a week and a half ago. Ha'azinu is the poem at the end of Moshe's long speech at the end of D'varim (Deuteronomy).

"It's like talking to a brick wall," my mother often said to me and my sister. It happened when she was trying to get us to do our chores, or stop fighting, or behave ourselves in front of guests. We weren't the best-behaved kids sometimes. She'd end her lectures with "did you hear me?" and, often, we'd sarcastically parrot it back to her, but little changed. What she said went in one ear and out the other, she often said.

Our prophets have this problem with us. The only prophet who actually succeeded in delivering his message and bringing about a change was Yonah -- and he was talking to the Assyrians, our enemies! Israel, on the other hand, didn't listen to our prophets, not the gentleness of Micah nor the warnings of Jeremiah. And not to Moshe either. In his final speech Moshe pleads with Yisrael to follow God's path, knowing full well that they will stray. Why does he bother? What's the point? The words of our prophets go in one ear and out the other.

I sometimes wonder if we have this problem with our own words of prayer sometimes. We say the words of the siddur, but do we internalize them? Are we listening? Or are we just reciting what is before us and moving on? Do our prayers go in one ear and out the other?

A funny thing happened with my parents' messages to my sister and me. I don't have kids but she does, and it turned out that she and I have both said to her kids many of the things we heard from our parents. The first time I heard myself telling one of them that I was talking to a brick wall, I stopped in my tracks. It turns out we did hear what they said, maybe even listened -- even if we didn't act on it back then.

Our prophets' words often seemed to fall on deaf ears, but despite that, we're still here. God hasn't wiped us out despite the dire warnings, no matter how much we've deserved it. Have we gone through some bad times? Yes, as Moshe knew we would, but some remnant, some part of Yisrael, listened to our prophets.

We always read Ha'azinu near Yom Kippur, either on Shabbat Shuva right before or, like this year, a few days after. Every year I make a sincere effort at Yom Kippur. I enter with regret and resolve to do better. The words of the day's prayers make a real impact on me and there's a lot of introspection. I hear the message and I think I'm listening. Yet it's hard to make it stick; it sometimes feels like the changes I try to make in myself don't survive much past the end of Sukkot. Should I bother? Won't I just be back here next year in the same situation?

But no, I can listen. Just as it turned out I listened to my parents and we listened to our prophets, I can listen to our prayers and my own yearnings. I can do better, just like our people did, just like my sister and I did. I can learn to listen. The message doesn't have to go in one ear and out the other.

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zeal

2018-07-18T02:35:20Z

I gave this d'var torah the Shabbat before last, for parshat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10–30:1). For context, read chapter 25 from the beginning; the break between weekly portions is in the middle of the episode.

( Read more... )

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Eikev (d'var torah): rewards for torah?

2017-08-16T03:12:14Z

The torah portion begins with Moshe describing to the people the rewards they'll receive for following in God's ways -- people and flocks will be fruitful, crops will be bountiful, none will be barren, there'll be no sickness or plagues, and they'll be victorious over the other nations. This is one of several places where the torah describes rewards for doing mitzvot. This is hard to understand, though, because the world doesn't work this way -- we do have people who want children and are barren, we do have sickness, crops aren't always bountiful, and so on. The good sometimes suffer and the wicked sometimes flourish. So how are we supposed to understand this?

(Spoiler warning: I don't have deep answers to this age-old problem. I have some thoughts.)

One approach we could take is to place it in context. Moshe is speaking to the Israelites at the end of their 40-year trek to the promised land. They're standing on the shore of the Yarden, about to cross over and conquer the land after this speech. Perhaps Moshe is speaking to these people in this time. There's even an ambiguously-placed "in the land that He will give you" (in 7:13), so maybe this promise isn't for everybody forever.

That's not very satisfying, though. The torah is supposed to be eternal, for us and not just for them.

Another approach was taken by the rabbis at least as early as the mishna (in Pirke Avot): Olam HaBa, the world to come. If we aren't rewarded in this world, Olam HaZeh, then we will be later. There are even mitzvot for which we get rewarded in both; we list some of them in eilu d'varim in the morning service. We should still focus on this world, not obsess about an afterlife like some other religions do, but an afterlife gives another opportunity for reward. I'm not sure how satisfying this is to most people, either.

I'd like to propose two additional dimensions to what the torah says about rewards, two additional axes to consider.

The first is communal versus individual actions and rewards. Sometimes the torah addresses us in the singular and sometimes in the plural. Some rewards, like bountiful crops, are clearly communal -- it's pretty hard for me to have a good harvest with rain in its proper season and so on while my immediate neighbor has the opposite. Some rewards could be individual, like health. Obligations, too, come in individual and communal varieties; we all have individual obligations in the mitzvot, but the whole community together has some too, like setting up courts, bringing communal offerings, and conducting wars in particular ways. And sometimes individual obligations can bring communal rewards -- there's a rabbinic tradition that if every Jew in the world were to keep (the same) Shabbat once, we'd get the moshiach. Quite aside from the individual rewards for keeping Shabbat -- you get Shabbat, a day of rest -- there can be a big communal reward.

When looking for rewards for our actions, therefore, we should look to both our individual and our communal benefits. Even if you're not feeling personally rewarded for following torah, maybe you're helping your whole community live in safety, health, and comfort. That counts, too.

The second dimension is the question of whom we do mitzvot for.

The Reform movement is not a halachic movement. Ok, technically we do say that the ethical mitzvot are binding and it's only the ritual ones that are optional, but those ethical mitzvot align pretty well with values we already have anyway like not stealing, being honest in business, caring for the poor, and many others. Among the others, we choose -- sometimes as a community and sometimes individually -- which mitzvot have meaning to us and we do those. Many of us find meaning in Shabbat, in communal worship like our morning minyan, in study, in many social-justice pursuits, and more.

If our progressive values and halacha conflict, however, we reinterpret (occasionally) or set aside (usually) halacha. By and large, we do the mitzvot that we do for ourselves, for the good feelings they produce and the values they align with.

When we do mitzvot for ourselves, maybe that good feeling that we get is the reward for doing the mitzvah. That's fair -- we're rewarded here and now, in Olam HaZeh, for doing mitzvot. Isn't that what we wanted?

So we tend to do mitzvot for ourselves, but there's an alternative. If we believe that torah is mi Sinai, from God, then we should do mitzvot not for ourselves but for God. Even the goofy ones, the ones we don't understand and don't find personal meaning in. (I struggle with this, to be clear.) I don't know too many people who find spiritual fulfillment in sha'atnez, the law against combining linen and wool, but it's something God cares about. Last week a friend and I were talking about kitniyot, the additional foods that Ashkenazim don't eat during Pesach even though they're not chametz, forbidden grains. (A bunch of other foods got implicated by association.) My friend is a thoughtful, intelligent person who wrestles with torah and seeks to understand; he's not one to just say "tell me what to do and I'll do it". He told me that some of these decisions about kitniyot are clearly wrong -- but nonetheless the halachic system that God gave us produced this result, so he follows it. For God, not for himself.

The name of our portion, Eikev, comes from the same root as Ya'akov, heel-grabber. I don't remember where I heard this idea, but perhaps this word is meant to remind us not to trample on mitzvot just because we think they're minor or goofy. Who's to say which ones God most cares about?

What's the reward for doing mitzvot for God and not for us? Is there a reward for putting up with ridiculous-seeming food restrictions for Pesach, for waving greenery around on Sukkot, for checking fiber contents on our clothing, for separating meat and milk dishes, and many other things? When we're not doing mitzvot for our own benefit the rewards can be less clear, but if we have faith that God gave us the torah at all, why shouldn't we also have faith that God will deliver on His promises in some way at some time?

When looking at rewards for torah, either individual or communal, perhaps we should have less focus on specific rewards for specific deeds. Instead, let us do right and trust God to respond.

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