Yitro's Rap
(After Exodus 18)

Moshe won't release himself from the burden that is crushing him.
And Yitro says, “What you are doing is not right."
"You're going to wear yourself out, and the people along with you."
And Isn't it true that there is nothing we fight for so fiercely
As the right to hold onto the thing that is killing us?

Alcohol, cigarettes, lousy boyfriends, jobs we hate,
Needing to be right, needing to be needed, needing to be afraid.
Being in charge, being in debt, being with someone, being left alone, 
And money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

Now listen to me. I will set you straight (and You-Know-Who be with you). 
You are holy and the only one who can save you. 
You are the dispute. You are the resolution. 
Set them all free and let yourself be.


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Sinai

"I'm bored. There's nobody to play with. Play with me."
My sweet grumpy seven-year-old plops on my lap
Demanding attention and complaining her world 
Is imperfect, somehow, and only I can help.

But my attention is trapped in some bit of work 
That seems so important. Even her soft pouts can't 
Convince me yet to give up the mind wheel I'm stuck
In. I suggest maybe trying Mama for now.

"Mama's napping!" But I look now and see her eyes.
The boney elbows and the impossible cheeks
Look just like the ones I had forty years ago,
When the world was strange and wouldn't answer my calls.

"Come here, sweet girl." And she wraps my head in bare arms.
We stay like that in one of those quiet moments,
When hormones of equanimity take over,
Breathing slows, and I want to hold her forever.

For three thousand years, I've wanted to hear Sinai's
Voice again—a moment when the sound of every
Bird chirp and rustling breeze speaks my eternity.
And here she is, in my lap, a perfect silence.


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Since 2006, the Clergy Letter Project has sponsored an annual "Evolution Weekend" for faith communities to address the relationship between religion and science. The weekend falls each year on or near February 12, the birthday of Charles Darwin. So, it is only a matter of delicious irony that, this year, the event falls on Shabbat Yitro, the Shabbat on which we read the story of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

It is delicious because Sinai is the quintessential moment of revelation in Jewish tradition—a moment in which knowledge comes directly from God to humanity. It is the very idea of revelation that is at the heart of the debate over evolution. What happens when theories developed by the scientific method appear to contradict the revealed word of sacred scriptures? Are devout believers obliged to refute such theories? Do scientific theories and revealed religious truths have equal standing in our society?

You can easily find people who stand on either extreme of these questions. There are secularists who say that only the testable and provable theories of science deserve to be called "truths." There are religious fundamentalists who will say that God's word is the only reliable source of truth and any deviation from that truth constitutes a false religion. For religious liberals (like me), understanding the relationship between science and divine revelation is a bit more complicated.

I begin by admitting that there are many different kinds of truth. There is no way to test statements like "murder is evil," "the stars are beautiful," or "I love my wife," in the same way that we can test the sum of two plus two. Yet, a person can be more certain of those truths in their heart and mind than anything that can be analyzed rationally. There are things that we know to be true without the need of proof.

Religion runs into difficulty, though, when it tries to read the non-rational, ethical, aesthetic and divine truths of scripture as if they were the same type of truths as those sought by science. If so-called "biblical literalists" insist that the first chapter of Genesis is a description of the world's physical origins, they eventually will earn and deserve the same reputation as those who condemned Galileo for placing the sun at the center of the solar system.

Science and religion, ultimately, are trying to answer different questions. Science seeks to describe the universe, what it is, how it works, and how it may change in the future. Religion has a different goal. Religion seeks to discover the meaning and purpose of reality—why we are here, how we are meant to live our lives, and how we understand ourselves. Looking for clues to the physical origin of species in the Bible makes about as much sense as looking for love in a test tube.

Most Jewish thinkers through the ages have been able to resolve perceived conflicts between revealed truths and scientific truths. Rambam (Maimonides), the great 12th century Jewish philosopher and legalist, wrote that since God gave humanity reason, it is our obligation to use our abilities to discover scientific truths about the natural world. Rambam went further to say that if truths proven by science appear to contradict Torah, we have an obligation to try to understand these natural truths more deeply, or to adjust our interpretation of Torah to allow for them. 

Judaism offers no obligation to refute the evidence of our senses or the reasoning ability of our minds. Reason and revelation can coexist.

What does this say about the way we think about revelation and Sinai? The Torah that was revealed at Sinai is not a history textbook or a compendium of scientific knowledge. It is a way of viewing the world. It does not offer facts, it give us something greater. The revelation of Sinai is that we live in a universe that has a purpose and a moral order. By engaging with words of Torah, we discover how to live lives that matter and lives that can discover the joy of being true to ourselves and our yearning to know God.


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Look at it this way, if you knew that there was something you could do, that would cost you nothing, that could save another person's life, you would do it. Right? No question about it. 

I'm saying this to you because I hear, over and over again, that there are still Jews who believe that being an organ donor is contrary to Jewish law. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jewish law requires us to act to save a life, and that is what we do when we donate the organs we're not using any more.

The real resistance, I fear, to Jewish organ donation has nothing to do with Jewish law. It has to do with death. Of course we fear death. We don't want to think about it and we don't want to think about what happens to our bodies after we die. I can sympathize with that. It doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies, either. But, we don't really have any choice when it comes to making a decision that could save a life. We have to do what we can do.

The card pictured above is my card. It was issued to me be the Halachic Organ Donor Society. It is an organization founded and run by orthodox Jews on a mission to overcome the resistance to organ donation in the Jewish community. Please believe me when I tell you that these people have not compromised one bit of their Jewish values or their commitment to Jewish law in encouraging people to make their useable organs available for life-saving transplants after they die.

There are complicated Jewish legal issues related to organ donation. Most have to do with the definition of when death occurs. I don't need to go into any of that here. All I want to do is just convince you that nothing should stand in the way—not your health, not your age, and not your fears—of making the choice to save a life.

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of this blog. I started it with the idea that I would try blogging for a year. So, it is time to decide if I want to keep going.

At first, the blog was an experiment. I wanted to see if it would help me stay in touch with the members of my former congregation while introducing myself to a new congregation. As a rabbi who prefers to serve smaller congregations, I wanted to see if a blog could give me a broader audience. I wanted to see if I could maintain a commitment to writing regularly about the weekly Torah portion and about invigorating Jewish spirituality. I wanted to see if I could expand my own joy by exploring the place of joy in Jewish thought.

Writing this blog has been a wonderful experience for me, both for the reasons I had hoped, and for reasons I never expected. If it's okay with you, I'm just going to keep on writing it.

What have I found out after writing this blog for a year? Here are five thoughts:

1) The search for joyful living is the essence of the Torah. It just constantly astonishes me that nobody ever told me this when I was a kid in religious school. It would have completely changed the way I thought about Judaism as a child. It has been easy for me to find reflections on joy in every one of the Torah's fifty-four parshiyot. (Well, I've only written about forty-nine of them so far, but I'm pretty sure I'll find joy in the other four). The quest to live a life that is deeply satisfying, fulfilling and joyful is right at the center of what it means to be a Jew.

2) It feels good to have a broader audience. After more than 30,000 page views, I have to admit that I like being able to share my thoughts about Torah with people near and far. I love serving and being part of a smaller Jewish community where it is possible for everyone to know each other, care for each other, and celebrate with each other. On the other hand, smaller congregations can feel a bit limiting—like hiding your light under a bushel, as someone once said. I now enjoy writing for regular readers in Florida, Massachusetts, New York, California, Ohio, Great Britain, Canada, Israel, and the Bailiwick of Jersey. (I didn't even know where that last one was when I started this.) You, the blog reader, have become a beloved part of my extended community.

3) The internet has changed the way people communicate. (Okay, you've heard this one before). I have found that this blog is the primary way that members of my own congregation stay in touch with Judaism. A rabbi friend of mine recently was asked in a job interview if he would spend a lot of time writing blogs, posting on Facebook, and doing Torah teachings on YouTube. The questioner wanted to know if he would be wasting his time with all that newfangled computer stuff. To my friend's credit, he said that teaching Torah through the internet is a great deal more than a fad; it is a critical way for contemporary rabbis to bring Torah into the lives of today's Jews. He was right. (P.S., he got the job.)

4) Writing is the best way to develop ideas to write about. I was a professional writer for years before I ever applied to rabbinic school, so I've had a lot of practice at it. Still, it often surprises me to see how the process of writing is my best tool for discovering new ideas and insights. I find that, as I begin to write, I dig more deeply into the text and find new connections. I strongly recommend writing about Torah to anyone who wants to study Torah. Just a few minutes a day of putting your thoughts on paper (or computer) opens up new worlds of understanding.

5) Torah is best when it is personal. I know that the internet sometimes seems like an obnoxious flow of self-congratulation, ego and narcissism. I am a fairly private person by nature and self-revelation is not my preferred way of teaching. Still, I have seen repeatedly how much more readers are drawn to Torah when it is expressed in personal terms. That is as it should be. Torah is about our lives, not just the lives of people who lived two or three thousand years ago. Torah is about the choices that we make every day. By sharing a bit of my life with you on this blog, I hope that I have done more than just stroke my ego; I hope that I have helped bring more Torah and more joy into your life.


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