Tonight, around 8:30 p.m., I interrupted my older daughter from her homework to tell her about the rocket launch that would be happening in fifteen minutes. I went to my wife, who was getting our younger daughter ready for bed, and told them about it, too. Then, at 8:44 p.m., we all went outside to our driveway, the little one in her pajamas, and looked up at the sky to watch the fire lifting up from Cape Canaveral, far to our north. 

The bright orange-red glow appeared suddenly, tracking up from the horizon. Then we saw the first stage of the Atlas V rocket separate and the next stage ignite. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes and it was much too far away for us to hear anything. We couldn't see the smoke or feel the trembling of the ground. But, even from a distance of 90 miles, we could tell that the rocket's fireball was big, impressive, awe-inspiring. 

My children are both fans of science fiction and fantasy. They have seen thousands of spacecraft fly on movie screens and in the pages of novels. This was the first time, though, that either of them had seen a real rocket launch. They stared up in wonder. For them, it was like a giant book had opened up above their heads. It revealed, in the place of words on a page, a burning sky.

When I read this week's Torah portion (Yitro) and its description of the moment before the revelation at Mount Sinai, I hear such similar images of fire, smoke, ground trembling, and a deafening blast of sound. This is the language of awe. It is the experience of being overwhelmed by something impossibly powerful and magnificent beyond our human scale.

Except that, for human beings of the 21st century, it's not. 

The scale once reserved for divinity has become our own. The power to heave a 700,000-pound rocket into space, for us, is human scale. That which was beyond the imagination of the ancients has become, to us, accepted reality. Things that were once the stuff of fantasy and imagination are now real. 

The problem modern people have with the miracles described in the Bible—like the revelation at Mount Sinai—is not that they are beyond our belief. Rather, they seem so puny to us. Why shouldn't we believe in a God who can fill the air with trumpet blasts, shake the ground with an earthquake, and light the sky with fire? To us, it's just another rocket launch that will appear on the back pages of the newspaper, if at all. It's the halftime show at the Superbowl. There is no deed so mighty, it seems, that we cannot do it.

It makes me wonder, then… Has Sinai lost the power to impress us? Have we become so awed by our own human power that we lack the ability to be awed by anything except ourselves?

If the answer is yes, it is a sad testimony for the state of the human soul. If we have reached the point at which nothing fascinates us more than our own triumphs, then we have become a race of hopeless narcissists. We have lost the spark of being able to marvel at the world beyond us.

Fortunately, our tradition has another metaphor—apart from the metaphor of fire, thunder and shofar blasts—for experiencing awe and wonder. It is the metaphor we find in the book of Kings when the prophet Elijah was led back to Mount Sinai by an angel. The text tells us that at the holy mountain, the prophet experienced…

"A mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of Adonai; but Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake, but Adonai was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but Adonai was not in the fire. And after the fire—a still, small voice." 
—I Kings 19:11-12

To recapture our sense of wonder, I believe we must turn our gaze away from the large and magnificent (were we only see ourselves), and look, instead, in the still small voice of ordinary and extraordinary human experience. Instead of using metaphors for God that refer to a powerful King, Sovereign and Ruler, we should instead talk about experiencing divinity in the moments that shape our lives—moments of insight and tenderness, moments of noticing the wonder in our children's eyes.

I had another such moment today. I sat with a family in the hospital that had just learned that their elderly patriarch would be entering hospice care as he prepares for life's final journey. I held the old man's hand, spoke gently to him about how much his family loves him, and turned to his daughters as I saw them daubing tears from the corners of their red eyes. The few quiet words we spoke after that were all we needed to feel God's breath upon us.

I don't need thunder and fire to understand Sinai. To me, the awe-inspiring moment of revelation is more clearly felt and more deeply experienced at a time like this. The world beyond ourselves has become the world within ourselves. It is not the might of our weapons, the speed of our computers, or the thrust of our rockets that show us God. Rather, it is in recognizing our frailty, and in remembering how much we need each other. 

That is the moment when we stand again at the foot of God's holy mountain in the wilderness.  That is where we know God.

Other Posts on This Topic:
Shemini: The Thing
Yitro: Science and Faith

Robert Frost died fifty years ago today. As a displaced New Englander, I am warmed by Frost and his poems. His words resonate with the sensory experiences of rural New England—the way the hills roll, the way the grass smells, and the way the snow settles to the ground. The ideas and feelings in his poems, too, reflect the spirit of the place. Frost's poetry has a gentle seriousness that is never more than a few boot strides away from the contemplation of eternity.

It turns out that Frost had a rather meaningful relationship with a Reform rabbi, and that connection, too, warms me. The University of Buffalo recently announced that they are making public, for the first time, a collection of letters and recordings of Frost that belonged to his close friend, Rabbi Victor E. Reichert. The collection was passed onto Reichert's son, Jonathan Reichert, who is a retired professor of physics at the University. 

Frost scholars are eager to look at the collection for hints and clues about Frost's views on religion. His beliefs have been considered a mystery by his biographers, as he neither spoke nor wrote much about them publicly. However, according to Rabbi Reichert, Frost did not have such reticence in speaking privately with him. The two would go for day-long walks with each other through the Vermont woods sharing insights about the Bible, literature and philosophy. 

The collection includes a recording of a talk Frost gave at  Rockdale Temple, the synagogue that Reichert served for 24 years (and where my friend, Rabbi Sigma Faye "Sissy" Coran, is now the rabbi). In his talk, the poet spoke of how "...[R]eligion always seems to me to come around to something beyond wisdom. It is the straining of the spirit forward to a wisdom beyond wisdom." Those are the words of a man who knew what it meant to struggle with faith and to struggle to know what faith can teach.

I shouldn't quibble with the scholars who have studied Frost's poetry and life much more closely than I have. I shouldn't say, "I told you so," to people who still consider Frost's religious beliefs to be a mystery. But I will say this: The man who wrote, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep," was a man who knew what it meant to stare into the abyss of unknowing and to emerge with the awareness that there is a Truth greater than we dare know.

And, perhaps, there was a Reform rabbi who helped him find those truths, which he put so beautifully into words.

And miles to go before I sleep, 
And miles to go before I sleep.

In this week's portion, we find that just a month after the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites began grumbling to Moses about food. "If only our deaths had come by the hand of Adonai in the land of Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat, we ate our fill of bread! But you have brought us to this desert to starve us all to death!" (Exodus 16:3). 

God responded to the ingratitude of the Israelites by producing a miraculous food for them. The manna fell from the sky with the morning dew and was "like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey" (Exodus 16:31). Yum.

But the Torah says explicitly that the manna was not just a gift from God, it also was a test "to see whether they will follow My instructions or not" (Exodus 16:4). The Israelites had to go out to gather the manna six days a week. On Fridays, double the normal amount of manna was gathered so that the Israelites would have enough for Shabbat. On Shabbat, no manna fell. 

The Israelites were instructed not to gather more manna than they needed. Miraculously, no matter how much manna each person collected, when they measured it, each person had exactly the right amount he or she needed to eat that day. Moses told them not to hoard manna. When some people tried to save manna beyond the day it was gathered, it became infested with maggots.

So, what was the test? Manna was an object lesson in accepting sufficiency. It taught the Israelites to quiet the parts of their minds that wanted to grasp to acquire as much as they could get, even beyond what they needed. Manna reminds us to let go of that hungry, insatiable part of us that thinks we can never have enough. It reminds us to appreciate what we have and to recognize when we are satisfied.

That is not just an important lesson about food; it is a lesson about life. There are all kinds of things that we use to harm ourselves by stuffing ourselves beyond the point of satiety. Whether it is wealth, power, television, alcohol, sex or writing blog posts (!), we need to learn the point at which we can say, "enough." We need to learn that if you can never reach a point of satisfaction, you can never be happy.

The second lesson comes from the minor holiday of Tu BiShvat that falls on this Shabbat this year. Tu BiShvat often is called "Jewish Arbor Day," the day that marks the beginning of the year for trees and which was given mystical meaning by the Kabbalists of the 16th century.

To the Kabbalists, Tu BiShvat was regarded as a day of sacred unification. They created a seder for Tu BiShvat modeled on the seder for Pesach. Many of the ritual foods eaten at the seder are fruits and nuts that grow on trees, divided into three categories that represent the levels of spiritual existence. Eating these foods at the seder is regarded as a tikkun, an action that has the power to rejuvenate the cosmos. Just as the sap in the trees begins to flow in the land of Israel at this time of year, the Kabbalists saw Tu BiShvat as the time when we can renew the flow of divine energy--shefa—throughout creation. 

In P'ri Etz Hadar, the anonymous Kabbalistic origin of the Tu BiShvat seder, a person recites a special prayer upon eating tree fruits on Tu BiShvat:

May it be Your will Adonai our God and God of our ancestors, that through the  sacred power of our eating fruit, which we are now eating and blessing, while reflecting on the secret of their supernal roots upon which they depend, that shefa, favor, blessing, and bounty be bestowed upon them. May the angels appointed over them also be filled by the powerful shefa of their glory, may it return and cause them to grow a second time, from the beginning of the year and until its end, for bounty and blessing, for good life and peace…

Whether or not you accept the idea that a person can effect the cosmos by eating fruits with a particular intention, the idea behind the seder for Tu BiShvat can teach us a lot about our relationship with our food. It is also a lesson in the way we exist in the world.  

Eating food is built into us. It is an inescapable reality of our physical existence. When we eat with intention—an awareness beyond satisfying our animalistic desires—we discover deep truths about ourselves. We can experience the pleasure of eating as a meditation on what it means to be alive in a world that has been given to us as the greatest possible gift we will ever receive. Eating becomes a sacred act in which our minds, bodies, spirit, and the spirit of the universe are united. We discover the Infinite in confronting the basic physical realities of being alive.

These two interpretations of our relationship with food may seem like a contradiction. On the one hand, manna teaches us to accept limitations. Manna is a symbol of how we are asked to restrict our appetites in order to learn to appreciate sufficiency. In contrast, Tu BiShvat is about an expansive view of our relationship with food. The seder focusses on how, by consuming the fruit of the tree with an elevated intention, we become part of a limitless, unrestricted experience in which we take part in the repair of the cosmos.

In truth, the two lessons are one. We build our soaring spiritual lives on a foundation of discipline. By accepting limitations on ourselves—what we eat, how much we consume, where we find our nourishment—we free ourselves to discover deep, revealing, ecstatic truths. By elevating ourselves above slavery to our base desires, we awaken deep appreciation of, and deep connection to, the world of which we are a part.

We eat with responsibility, with awareness, and with joy.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Tu BiShvat: The Tree and the Renewal of Creation
Sukkot: Reconnecting to Our Food
Sh'mini: Eat. Pray. Kashrut.

This week, I am one of seven rabbis visiting the Coalition of Immokalee Workers with Truah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. We're learning about how farm workers are fighting to protect themselves from abusive working conditions—of which slavery is at the extreme end of a spectrum—to win lives of dignity and justice, and to escape from a cycle of abuse and poverty.

The farm workers in Immokalee are not Jewish. Some are immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatamala, Haiti, and South America. Some are Americans whose parents and grandparents came here from those countries. Why would a group of American rabbis want to get involved? 

Part of my answer comes out of an interpretation of a verse from Torah we studied today. (You can't put a group of rabbis together without some Torah study):

"Do not bring an abhorrence into your house, or you will become an outcast thing like it..." (Deuteronomy 7:26)

In this case, slavery and the abuse of workers is the thing we are warned not to bring into our homes. When we purchase foods, such as tomatoes, that have been picked by abused workers, we become complicit in their exploitation. In a spiritual sense, we could even say that in buying the products of slavery we make ourselves slaves, "an outcast thing like it." It is as if we declare that we are so enslaved by our desire for convenience and cheap produce that we cannot allow our moral sensibilities to override it. Even for a tomato.

This is not to say that every tomato is tainted. Pacific Tomato Growers (makers of "Sunripe Tomatoes") is just one of the tomato growers that has signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. So have about 90% of the growers in Florida. The agreements set standards for the treatment of farm workers. Because these workers' wages have not increased in thirty years, the agreement also creates a mechanism for them to receive an extra penny per pound for the tomatoes they pick. The restaurant chains, Taco Bell, Chipotle, McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway also have signed. So have the supermarket chains Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

On the other hand, Publix has not. The largest supermarket chain in Florida, the state that produces the most tomatoes, has refused to meet with the CIW for the last four years to discuss efforts to combat the exploitation of farm workers who pick the tomatoes on their shelves.

Eating the fruits of slavery is bad for the Jews. It makes us forget who we are—the people who are commanded, "Love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 19:34).

Don't be a slave to your selfish desires. Make the choice instead to rule yourself according to your highest values. Make yourself like those we hope for, not like the misery of their oppression.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Coming Out of Hiding
Sukkot: Reconnecting to Our Food
Devarim: Bringing Your Questions to God
Sh'mini: Eat. Pray. Kashrut.
Lifting Our Hands

Advocates for the unfettered right to bear arms often argue that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution answers any possible question about firearm restrictions because it grants citizens an absolute right to own firearms. That is not true. The Constitution can provide no absolute rights because the rights of one person can always be in conflict with the rights of others. 

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment to guarantee most citizens the right to keep handguns in their homes for self-defense (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 [2008]). The Court also has said that neither the federal government nor the individual states may abrogate that right (McDonald v. Chicago, 561 US 3025 [2010]), but it has said little beyond that. 

This is in accord with Jewish tradition, which also states that a person should defend his or herself in a deadly confrontation. The Talmud says that "If a pursuer comes to kill you, kill him first" (B. Sanhedrin 72a). It follows that if a person has the right (or duty) to self-defense, that person must also have the means. 

However, just as the right to free speech in the First Amendment does not give people the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, the Second Amendment does not give everyone the right to own any kind of weapon. In American civil law and in Jewish law, the right to bear arms is tempered by the right of others to be protected from the chaos of a society in which dangerous people possessed firearms or in which highly dangerous weapons were easily obtainable. 

In fact, the federal government and every state in the Union already restrict the right to bear arms. State and federal laws, for example, ban felons and minors from owning guns, require the registration of certain firearms dealers, and prohibit carrying firearms in certain schools, government offices and military installations. The question is not whether the government can regulate firearms, only how much.

In light of a rash of mass killings with legally owned weapons—especially the murder of 27 people, 20 of them children, in a school in Newtown, Connecticut—our society must ask if current restrictions go far enough to protect innocent people. The vast weight of Jewish tradition suggests that such restrictions are not only advisable, they are morally necessary.

The Torah teaches us, "You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:16). The verse is most often interpreted in Jewish sources as a positive commandment to act preemptively against the loss of life. The Talmud expands upon this principle, teaching: 

How do we know that if you see someone drowning, mauled by beasts, or attacked by robbers, you are obligated to save that person? From the verse, "You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor" (B. Sanhedrin 73a)

The general principle is clear. If we have the power to save lives, we are morally obliged to act. Proactive action to prevent loss of life is not optional. It is required. 

The contemporary problem of guns in society seems to fit this principle. More than 30,000 people were killed by guns in the United States in 2010, more than the number of people who were killed by acts of terrorism worldwide. Certainly, it is not possible to prevent all of those deaths by passing restrictions on gun ownership and use. But it is equally certain that some additional restrictions could have saved lives without denying others their right to self-protection. 

Measures such as background checks for all gun sales, banning large clips that allow a shooter to fire dozens of rounds in a few seconds, and banning military-style assault weapons are reasonable. None of these restrictions is a complete solution in itself, but each could, perhaps, save hundreds of lives by keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the most dangerous hands. We are obliged to act to save lives.

Such restrictions in our times very much resemble the kinds of restrictions that the rabbinic authorities of the Talmud mandated for their times. The Talmud requires a person to keep a dangerous dog on a chain (B. Bava Kamma 79a). The Talmud also prohibits the sale of weapons and the accessories for weapons to people who are known to be engaged, or are suspected of being engaged, in  dangerous or immoral behavior (B. Avodah Zarah 15b). 

Gun rights advocates sometimes argue that, instead of restricting the ownership and use of guns, it would be better to put more guns into the hands of more "good guys" to solve the problem of guns in the hands of "bad guys." Both sides in the gun debate point to studies that variously say (depending on the policies they favor) either that more guns lead to more violence, or that more guns lead to less violence. You can take your pick of the solution you favor, but it is clear that Jewish tradition has its own preference.

The Talmud teaches that weapons are, at best, a necessary evil. All things considered equal, Jewish tradition would prefer a world in which there were fewer weapons, not more. A mishnah states to this effect: 

"A person should not walk around with a sword, bow, shield, lance or spear. Such behavior requires a sin offering. Rabbi Eliezer asked, 'What if they are merely ornaments?' to which the Sages say, 'They are shameful'" (B. Shabbat 63a). 

How do the rabbis know that wearing weapons is shameful, not something we should desire or feel good about? They offer one of the most famous passages from the prophets as a proof text. It is, they say, as Isaiah taught, "They shall beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4). 

We should aspire to a world without guns. A gun may stop a gun, but, by that logic, we will live in a society in which the threat of violence surrounds us everywhere. That is not what Jewish values suggest as an ideal society. Judaism rejects the nihilism of a society whose motto is, "Every man for himself." 

Rather, our tradition teaches that we should be proactive in creating a society in which we take care of each by accepting limitations on the weapons and behaviors that tend to lead us toward fear, hatred, violence and threat. God has made us to be joyful in life, not to be fearful.

Judaism suggests that we place restrictions on the most dangerous weapons and keep all weapons away from those most likely to use them violently. It is a position that is consistent with the framework of the Second Amendment and with the values of our tradition. 


Other Posts on This Topic:
Darkness
Vayera: The Children of Sodom

If you love Israel, you don’t only love her for being the Jewish homeland, the place where the story of our people began. You don’t love her only for her ancient sites—like the fortress of Masada, the waterfalls of Ein Geidi, and the ancient cities of Beersheba, Jaffa and Jerusalem. You don’t love Israel only as the symbol of the world’s redemption, the place where God promised to draw the nations of the world together in peace.

No, if you love Israel, you also have to love her for what she is today, right now. Israel is a thriving, fast-paced and tumultuous society. It is a place filled with an astonishing variety of people—kibbutzniks in the Galilee and ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, bohemians in Tel Aviv and mystical religious seekers in Sefat, gun-toting settlers in the West Bank and vineyard workers in the Golan Heights, tank commanders in the Negev and Arab merchants in East Jerusalem. Israel is a complex society, filled with contradictions, always grappling with the difficulties implicit in its identity as the world’s only Jewish state, a country surrounded by hostile neighbors, and the only democracy in the Middle East.

As you may know, Israel right now is preparing for national elections, a process that puts many of the country’s inner conflicts on display. This Tuesday, Israelis will vote for members of the new Knesset, the national parliament, choosing from a ballot on which no fewer than thirty political parties will be listed. It is likely that the new Knesset will include representatives from as many as a dozen of those parties.   

Israeli politics can be frustratingly complex, even for those who read about it in the newspaper every morning over their coffee in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. American Jews tend to see the country as a monolith and don’t understand the many factions and conflicting issues that make up Israeli society. Tonight, I would like to take some time to give you an overview of Israeli society as reflected in next week’s election, and to offer some thoughts about what to look for when the election results come in.

First of all, you should know that Israel’s Knesset works on a system of pure proportional representation. That means that every party that receives at least 2% of the vote will have at least one representative in the 120 seat Knesset. It does not matter how geographically spread out those votes are. Any party that can gather about 65,000 votes from anywhere in the country will be in the Knesset.  

Second, you should know that in the entire history of the State of Israel, no party has ever had a majority of Knesset seats. Every government Israel has ever had has been formed by a coalition — often a tenuous coalition — of parties that have some fundamental differences with each other.

After the last election, in 2009, for the first time in Israel’s history, the party that got the most seats in the election was not the party to form the government. The centrist Kadima Party, which was founded in 2005 by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, won 28 seats but was unable to form a majority coalition around its platform of aggressively pursuing a land-for-peace negotiated settlement with the Palestinian Authority. 

The government, instead, was formed by the right-of-center Likud Party, led by Israel’s once and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Likud was the runner-up in the 2009 election and formed a coalition that included the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party, with which it is now virtually merged. Other coalition partners included the left-of-center Labor Party and the ultra-orthodox religious Shas Party. 

Netanyahu has led Israel on a platform that endorses the formation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank as a long-term goal, but which says that the Palestinians must first relinquish all preconditions before negotiations can begin. Netanyahu also has been a strong backer of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and has allowed them to expand their communities. Palestinians, and many Jews on the political left in Israel, see the settlements as a barrier to the formation of a viable Palestinian state and charge that Netanyahu’s real goal is to delay any agreement with the Palestinians until a Palestinian state becomes a virtual impossibility. 

Entering the 2013 elections, the issues of peace with the Palestinians has actually receded into the background of national attention. In recent years, there have been major social and political upheavals in Israel in opposition to cuts in social programs, lack of affordable housing, and a growing disparity between the rich and poor in Israel. The Labor Party, which for many years was the leading force for peace with the Palestinians, is now turning toward these socioeconomic issues. Labor’s current leader, Shelly Yachimovich, is regarded as a champion on housing, education and health issues. With that focus, the Labor Party is expected to do better in Tuesday’s election than it did four years ago, but not well enough to displace Netanyahu from the Prime Minister’s office.

For those Zionist Jews who want to cast a clear vote for an immediate agreement with the Palestinians on peace and the creation of a Palestinian State, there is only one party left, Meretz. National polls show that nearly half of all Israelis agree with Meretz on moving quickly toward a peace settlement, but few of them will vote for such a staunchly left-wing party. Most of the pro-peace votes will go to the more mainstream Labor Party and a few centrist parties.

Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) focusses on political reform and an end to the government subsidies enjoyed by ultra-orthodox yeshivas. Hatnuah, another centrist party, is identified with its leader, Tzipi Livni, the former leader of the Kadima Party, which has fallen apart almost entirely.

Over on the right end of the political spectrum, Jewish Home is the new up-and-coming party, a coalition of pro-settler and right-wing religious groups. Jewish Home’s leader, Naftali Bennett, caused a stir in Israel when he said in a recent interview that if he were serving in the army, he would rather go to jail than follow an order to evacuate illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Some Israelis saw this as bordering treason, others thought it was heroic. The party is expected to have a significant position in the next Knesset with as many as 15 or 16 seats.

In a country where few people have a lifetime loyalty to any one party, Shas is a major exception. The Shas party is the stalwart of religious Jews of Sephardic or Middle Eastern descent — quite a large demographic in Israel, and a group that feels it has been discriminated against by the dominant Ashkenazic minority. Shas is synominous with Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef; the party’s spiritual leader is rightly considered one of the greatest living authorities on traditional Jewish law. While his rulings are considered lenient in the world of ultra-orthodox Judaism — for example, he says that it is permissible for boys and girls to study together, until the age of nine — his agenda is far from the interests of Israel’s secular majority. In particular, as a condition for joining a government coalition, Shas would seek continued exemption from military service, and continued state funding, for ultra-orthodox yeshiva students.

Many secular Israelis — and some religious Israelis, too — have reached the point where they are no longer able to accept the idea that their taxes subsidize the endless Torah studies of tens of thousands of ultra-orthodox men who do not serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. The issue came to a head last February when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the law that exempts yeshiva students from military service is unconstitutional. (This in a country that does not have a constitution, but that’s another story.) Israel will soon be at a point where it must decide whether to tell the ultra-orthodox they must participate in the nation's defense.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that he favors a “more equal” obligation to service, but he has not been specific about what that would mean. Some of the other secular parties have taken stronger positions against the military service exemption. Almost all of the religious parties refuse to even talk about the issue.

Israel also has a few Arab parties which reliably hold a total of ten to twelve seats in the Kneset. This is to be expected as about fifteen to twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Muslim and Christian Arabs. Any other block that size could wield significant power in the Kneset, but this is not the case for the Arab parties. Since the founding of Israel, there has been a political taboo on including non-Jewish parties in the government. The political left can usually count on the votes of the Arab parties in the Kneset, especially on peace issues, but there is an equally strong taboo on passing any significant legislation on national security or peace without a majority of the Jewish members of the Kneset.

So, if you’ve been doing the math, you will have noticed that the next Kneset is likely to look like this: The current leading party of Likkud united with Yisrael Beiteinu will have something on the order of 35 to 40 seats, less than in the current Knesset, but more than enough to take the lead to form a new government. They will need to find coalition partners with twenty to twenty-five additional seats to find their majority in the Knesset. They will have two different ways to do this, or a combination of the two.

The easy way would be to look to their right, which is how the ruling coalition was formed in the last government. The Jewish Home party could get Netanyahu most of the way to a majority, even if it means giving a ministry or two to Naftali Bennett and his provocative remarks about defying orders to dismantle settlements. Add the religious party, Shas, to that, and Netanyahu would have his governing coalition. 

Such a government could be counted on continue policies of building new settlements in the West Bank and further delays to changing the military exemption for ultra-orthodox yeshiva students. Under such a government, we could expect continued difficult relationships between Israel and the United States, which wants to see progress in peace talks with the Palestinians. It could also mean continued strains in Israel’s relationship with leaders in the American Jewish community, which wants to see liberalization in the recognition of non-orthodox Judaism, including the right of non-orthodox rabbis to officiate at weddings, conversions and funerals.

The baggage that goes with a solidly right-wing coalition might be uncomfortable for Netanyahu. Also, part of Netanyahu’s power comes from being seen as the best alternative for the interests of the settler’s movement and the right wing. He may not want to lend greater legitimacy to the parties on his right by placing them prominently in the government. Also, Netanyahu tends to be more of a political pragmatist than an ideologue, so he may choose to look to the center and the center-left to form his government. There he will find a viable path to a majority with the Labor Party, Yesh Atid and Hatnua as junior partners in the coalition.

Such a choice would deeply anger the ultra-orthodox, who would notice the Sword of Damacles hanging right over their military exemptions and government funding for yeshiva students. It would also suggest a willingness to be more cooperative with the Obama administration’s desire to see greater progress in negotiations with the Palestinians. That would anger the settlers and the right wing. 

Netanyahu is probably waiting to see where the greater weight of votes falls in the election, to his right or to his left. Once he sees that, he can then play the center against the right, and the right against the center, to negotiate the best deal for himself — maybe a combination of right and center parties.

In reporting on the election, the American press will probably focus on the fact that Netanyahu will remain as Prime Minister. For Israelis, that is uninteresting. It's already a given. The more important question is how many votes go to the right — primarily the Jewish Home Party — and how many go to the center-left — primarily the Labor Party. That will probably tell the story of what kind of government, and what kind of policies, Israel will have for the next few years.

Sitting here, tonight, in Stuart, Florida, it may seem that such machinations 6,600 miles away are unimportant to us. In fact, they matter a great deal. Israel is the 64-year-old experiment in how a country ruled by Jewish values works in the real world. It isn’t easy and, occasionally, it gets pretty ugly. But it is real. 

As American Jews, we can’t participate directly in the government of Israel, but we do show our love and our concern for Israel by taking the time to pay attention to an event that shows the issues that are most important to her.

Israel is a golden country and Jerusalem, her capital, is a focus of our prayers and dreams. Yet, it is a real place. We love her by seeing the political and social realities she lives with, as well as the dream.

Shabbat shalom.

In his study, Libet showed that impulses to initiate some body movements are sent by the brain fractions of a second before we become consciously aware of them. The study suggests that our conscious awareness is the last part of us to find out what we are actually doing. 

Our subconscious, our nerves and muscles all have decided what we will do before our consciousness ever finds out. The conscious mind comes up with the explanations, or the rationalizations, for our behaviors only after the fact. Libet concluded that the whole idea of free will may be an illusion.
 
Libet's study raises serious philosophical, moral and religious questions. It even has implications for criminal justice. If our bodies decide to do things without the involvement of the thinking, reflecting, considering parts of our brains, how can people be held responsible for their actions? If we do not choose to do things with the part of us that is capable of making moral decisions, is morality meaningful?

These are questions that were considered by the ancient rabbis long before Libet's study. In this week's Torah portion (Bo), God tells Moses, "Go to Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants so that my signs may be displayed in his midst" (Exodus 10:1). A classical midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 13:3) asks whether God denied Pharaoh the ability to freely choose his actions by hardening his heart. It troubles the rabbis that God eventually punished Pharaoh for actions he may not have been free to choose.

Rabbi Yochanan said, "Does the 'hardening of Pharaoh's heart' provide heretics with grounds to claim that Pharaoh had no way to repent?" Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish answered, "Let the mouths of the heretics be stopped up… When God warns a person once, twice, and even a third time, and he still does not repent, then God's heart closes against repentance… Thus it was with wicked Pharaoh. Since God sent five times to him and he took no notice, God said, 'You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart, so I will add to your uncleanness.'"

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says that when people freely and repeatedly choose a path that goes against God, they close themselves from divine compassion. As they harden themselves, God responds by hardening against them. 

From a psychological perspective, this could be understood as a natural consequence of indulging in behavior that is willfully ruthless and cruel. The more people become used to behaving in uncaring ways, the more they become deaf to any call toward compassion. God does not deny free will to Pharaoh, Rabbi Shimon may be arguing. Rather, Pharaoh's own choices remove him from the ability to be moved by ethical concerns.

How shall we reconcile this with what modern science teaches us about free will? Benjamin Libet's research suggests that our behavioral choices are more on the instinctual level than on the conscious level. Acting ethically may be more of a habit than a conscious decision. Through repetition, we inure ourselves to behaving well or behaving poorly. Morality may be more about subconscious patterns of behavior than we had imagined, but it is still something human beings can nurture within themselves, even on a Pavlovian level.

That is also, in a curious way, what the midrash suggests. Pharaoh did not lose his free will because of a divine thunderbolt. Through his own behavior and choices, Pharaoh trained himself toward the kind of hardhearted behaviors that stripped him of the ability to do otherwise. That is why God says that Pharaoh's heat was hardened; it was the consequence of his own choices.

And what does that teach us about ourselves? Be very careful about the choices you make in life. Every time you choose to respond to another person with care and compassion, you are setting an unconscious pattern that will be repeated. Every time you choose to be indifferent or unresponsive to the needs of others, you train yourself to be as stubborn and unmovable as Pharaoh.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Bo: Hitting Rock Bottom
You are What You Choose to Be
Bechukotai: Being Commanded, Choosing Joy

Tonight, the congregation I serve is celebrating the thirteenth anniversary of the dedication of its Temple building. We're calling it the Temple's "bar mitzvah." A bit gimmicky? Perhaps. Buildings, of course, cannot accept the obligation of doing mitzvot—or read from Torah, for that matter. But I do believe that, done with the right intention, such a celebration represents the best within Jewish tradition.

Anyone who has ever been through the process of building a new synagogue building (I have, but not at my present congregation) knows what a labor of love it is, and knows how many people need to contribute their love, labor and treasure to make it happen. When a group of people come together to create a new spiritual home, they are doing much more than putting up walls and a roof. They are making an existential statement that says, "We are Jews who are proud to be here. Each of us dedicates a bit of ourselves to something that will last and have an impact far beyond ourselves. We have faith in the power of community." It is a powerful statement about our communal identity, our attachment to the past, our deepest desires for the present, and our profoundest hopes for the future.

Thirteen years ago, that kind of a statement resounded loud and clear from a small group of Jewish families in and around Stuart, Florida. They were no longer content to be a scattered, loosely connected, and homeless community. They wanted to plant a tree in the ground that would grow, and it did.  

 In just the first year after I was ordained as a rabbi, I faced a situation that made me wish that I had a million years of preparation. A few days before I was scheduled to officiate at the wedding of a young couple, the father of the bride died suddenly of a heart attack. The family, of course, was in agony. I felt completely unable to handle the situation. How do you console someone at such a moment? What can you even say?

In retrospect, I wish that I had tried to say less. God can speak to us when we are in such pain, but listening can be very difficult. That was something I needed to recognize in the young couple in front of me, and it was something I needed to recognize in myself. I now wish that, instead of offering so many words, I had had the wisdom to listen more to them and to my own feelings of powerlessness. The pain of the situation made me deaf to both.

There is a Chasidic teaching about the way that pain deafens us in this week's Torah portion (Va'eira). It comes from an apparent contradiction in the text.

When God instructed Moses what to say to the Israelites, God told him, "They will listen to your voice…" (Exodus 3:18; the preposition "to," as we shall see, is important). However, when Moses actually does speak to them, the text says, "Moses spoke thus to the Israelites, but they did not heed Moses because of their crushed spirits and harsh labor" (Exodus 6:9). 

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk once asked Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka, "How do we reconcile these two Scriptures? Heaven forbid that the words of the Holy One of Blessing were not fulfilled!" Is it possible, he wondered, that God was wrong about the Israelites paying attention to Moses?

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka's answer turns on a small detail of the Hebrew. He explains, "God said to Moses, precisely, 'They will listen to your voice.' It is not, however, written, 'They will listen in your voice.'" He points out that when Moses later wants to makes sure the Israelites pay attention to him, he says, "And now, if you will listen in my voice…" (Exodus 19:5). 

The distinction, says Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka, is critical. He says that when God told Moses that the Israelites would "listen to his voice," it meant only that they would hear the sound of his voice, not the content of his words. Why didn't they hear what Moses was saying? “Because of their crushed spirits and harsh labor.” Their spiritual pain prevented them from taking in the full depth of Moses’ words. (Itturei Torah, Vol. 3, p. 55).

This is an experience that we all have known from childhood. When we are distraught, angered or in distress, we seldom hear clearly what is being said to us. Words that are meant to calm, soothe or comfort us do not come through. The words might even be misunderstood as challenging, judgmental or condescending. 

There is a corresponding teaching in Pirke Avot that tells us, "Do not attempt to appease a person when he is angry, to comfort a person when his dead lies before him, or to question a person when he utters a vow" (M. Avot 4:23). There is a time when we should acknowledge the limitations of words and to understand that even beautiful words will not be truly heard.

That is not an indictment against the person who cannot hear. It is not a spiritual failing. It is part of how we experience life with all of its ups and downs. 

There is a cycle of "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Wisdom comes from recognizing each time and its appropriate boundaries. Wisdom is seeing that there is no joy that will drive away all sorrow, and there is no loss that will drive away all hope. Torah teaches that slaves may arise to see God's presence and hear God's voice on a mountain top. A bride who has lost her father may later find joy and fulfillment in marriage, children and family. Life goes on.

When I say—as I often do on this blog—that the challenge for our era of Judaism is to rediscover joy, I am not preaching a Judaism that is all happiness, all the time. That would be a Judaism no deeper than the light pablum of a television sitcom. Rather, I want to nurture a Judaism that speaks to us—and listens to us—through all the difficult passages of our lives and helps us return to joy. 

Joy is not the precondition of Jewish living. Life takes us through dark moments that must be acknowledged. But finding joy and returning to it is part of the life of Torah.


Other Posts on This Topic:
First Post!
Not Turning Away from Grief

Names

Moses asks God for a Name
And gets a puzzle for his trouble.
"Be" in first person singular, imperfect.
And, I discover, that is also my name.

Here I am sitting in a strange place, alone,
And very imperfect myself.
It is a name for God that fits
In quiet moments of uncertain thoughts.

Who shall I be? What name applies
In this perfectly imperfect world
Of solitary questioning within?
I will be a shepherd alone with the fire.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Shemot: Sacred Names
Shemot: Midwives, Morality and Meaning