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Pekudei: This is What a Revolution Looks Like

2/26/2014

 
PictureStudents at the University of Missouri form a human wall to block anti-gay protestors.
This is what a revolution looks like. Consider the events of this month:

• On February 9, Michael Sam, a recently graduated football player from the University of Missouri, publicly announced that he is gay. It is expected that, once he signs with a professional team, he will be the first active NFL player to have declared publicly that he is gay. Less than a week after the announcement, hundreds of student at the University of Missouri formed a human wall to protect Sam from fifteen protestors from a radically anti-gay church.

• On February 12, Federal District Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled that, in keeping with the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process, the state of Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The ruling did not, however, require the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

• On February 13, Federal District Judge Arenda Wright Allen declared that the state of Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The ruling was stayed pending appeal, meaning that same-sex couples will not be able to marry in Virginia until the state has exhausted its appeals to higher courts. Judge Wright Allen's ruling followed similar rulings by federal judges invalidating bans against same-sex marriages in Utah and Ohio.

• On February 23, professional basketball player Jason Collins signed with the New Jersey Nets and became first publicly gay athlete to play in any of four major North American pro sports leagues.

• Today, February 26, Federal District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled that the state of Texas' ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution. As in the Virginia case, the judge stayed the ruling pending appeal.

• Later today, February 26, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a conservative Republican, vetoed a measure that would have allowed businesses in the state to deny service to gay and lesbian customers on "religious grounds." Brewer had been urged to veto the bill by former conservative Republican presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney. Brewer also had been pressured to reject the measure by business interests, including the National Football League. In a public pronouncement against the bill, Major League Baseball invoked the memory of Jackie Robinson and the struggle for African-American civil rights in the 1950s and '60s. 

These events are stunning, but not just because they mark a dramatic turnaround in the way gays and lesbians are perceived and treated in our society. They are even more stunning because they are being accepted as almost inevitable developments by the majority of Americans. There are (as of yet) no big protest marches through the streets of deep red Oklahoma, Utah and Texas against these rulings. The few people who have spoken against the appearance of gay athletes in professional team sports have been roundly criticized for doing so. Even socially conservative political leaders recognize that laws permitting discrimination against gays and lesbians will eventually hurt them — badly — in public opinion.

Piece by piece, the attitudes of the American people toward gays and lesbians have been rebuilt over the course of the past decade. Back in 2003, before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of equal marriage rights, the idea of legalized marriage for same-sex couples seemed like a far-away dream of the gay activist fringe. The idea of openly gay men playing on professional sports teams seamed unthinkable. 

ּA decade ago, nothing would have seemed odd or unforeseeable if business owners refused to serve people just because they were gay. Now, no one is dismayed when such discrimination is seen by many as a sign of bigotry. No one can claim to be surprised, either, if it is regarded as  immoral and illegal. 

We Americans were once persuaded by people who claimed that gays in sports or in the military would "threaten morale." We were frightened by people who preached that homosexuals had an agenda to "turn our loved ones gay." To most people, those claims now seem ridiculous, even delusional.

How did this change happen? How did the acceptance of gays and lesbians — something that once seemed like a distant hope and dream — become real? Mostly, it was built on broken closet doors. As more and more gays and lesbians began living their lives proud and out, the rest of society could not help but notice that they were real people with real lives, real problems, real love, and real pain. We also started to notice that they were our friends, our co-workers, our coreligionists, our aunts and uncles, our nieces and nephews, our sons, our daughter, and, sometimes, ourselves.

Piece by piece, those relationships built a new set of norms, new compassion, and a new sense of regret for previous attitudes. The revolution we have witnessed has been advanced by the melting away of old fears and the opening of hearts.

In this week's Torah portion (Pekudei), we see the culmination of the building of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle that the Israelites carried through the wilderness to worship God. The Mishkan was built piece by piece with excruciating detail, and with deepest devotion and caring. When all that labor of love finally came together — when Moses put together the final pieces — God's Presence descended upon the Israelites and found a home in the Mishkan. 

That is my metaphor for this week. The love and compassion that our society has slowly put together over the last decade, one relationship at a time, seems to be culminating in a new and palpable presence that fills the vast majority of our society. May it ever be so.

Mind you, I am not declaring an end to this revolution. Not by a long shot. Every revolution has a counter-revolution, so don't be surprised when the forces that oppose equality gather their strength and push back hard against the changes they see in our society. There are signs already that this will happen.

Not all the news this month has been good. The Winter Olympics in Putin's Russia, with its arcane and draconian laws against "homosexual propaganda," were a reminder of how a society can be mired in ignorance and hatred. The passage of a law in Uganda that makes homosexuality a crime punishable by life imprisonment — a law that was passed with funding from American anti-gay activists — is another bitter reminder. So is the ongoing stream of news about violence against homosexuals right here in the United States.

And let's not forget that there are still 33 states in which not everyone has the right to marry the person they love. We have come a long way, but the task is not yet complete.

This revolution is not over, but the terms of the confrontation have changed. We no longer need to prove the obvious — that gays and lesbians are human beings and that their love has the same dignity and meaning as the love of straight people. With each victory in the courts, at the ballot box, in corporate policies, on college campuses, on the sporting field, around dining room tables, and under the chuppah, we are building a Tabernacle in which God's presence can be experienced.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Pinchas: Freedom Must be Won
Searching for How the Bible Defines Marriage

Vayakhel-Pekudei: Love, Work and Rest

3/16/2012

 
This week's Torah reading begins with three verses that seem out of place. Most of this week's portion discusses the construction of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle that the Israelites carried through the desert. However, the text opens with the laws for observing Shabbat, which already were given in Parashat Yitro. Out of the blue, with no apparent connection to the Mishkan, the Torah again tells us:
Picture
Every other creature appears to balance work and rest—like breathing in and out. We are the only animals who are in any danger of intentionally working ourselves to death. (Photo by Petr Kratochvil)
Moses convoked the entire community of the Israelites and said to them, "These are the things that Adonai has commanded you to do: For six days you will do your work, but on the seventh day you will have the holiness of a complete Shabbat day of rest for Adonai. Anyone who does work on it shall be put to death. Do not kindle fire in any of your settlements on the day of Shabbat." (Exodus 35:1-3)

Traditionally, the mention of Shabbat here, before the completion of the Mikshkan, is interpreted as a sign of the precedence of Shabbat over the building of the Mishkan. Based on this, the ancient rabbis derived the thirty-nine categories of work prohibited on Shabbat. Any work that could be connected to a large building project—from planting crops to carrying objects from one place to another—is forbidden on Shabbat because, as we learn from this week's portion, Shabbat takes precedence over the building the Mishkan.

There is another lesson, though, that we might take from the strange and repetitious appearance of the Shabbat restrictions at the beginning of this week's portion. It is not just that the commandment of Shabbat rest overrides the commandment to build, it is also that the very idea of rest should take precedence over the impetus to work.

Sigmund Freud wrote that human beings require two things to remain human: love and work. We need to love and to be loved. We need to have something to do that gives us a feeling that we are useful and have a purpose. Torah, though, suggests one more thing that we need—rest. We need to have time to sit and reflect on our lives. We need a time when our purpose is not to do, but to consider what all of that work means. This is what Shabbat is.

The odd thing, though, is that our tradition teaches that Shabbat rest actually comes before work. Before we even begin to work, we must take the time to reflect on our labors. It may not make logical sense—why take a break before the work is begun?—but it does make spiritual sense. 

Before we lift the hammer, plow the field, or start typing at the keyboard, we need to know what that work means. We need to understand why it matters. We need to reflect on how our struggles in life fit into the larger puzzle of a universe that is a mystery to us.

It can seem like human beings are the only animals that do not understand instinctively the need for rest. Every other creature appears to balance work and rest—like breathing in and out. We are the only animals who are in any danger of intentionally working ourselves to death. And we do it all the time.

When I see the way that people's work takes over their lives in our society, I worry. I see so many people who put work first—their number one priority. If our work life takes such a priority over every other aspect of our humanity, how can we be sure that we will ever rest long enough or deeply enough to ask the question, "What we are working for?"

Shabbat needs to come first—not just in time, and not just in law—but in our hearts. Shabbat, this beautiful gift of deep and spiritual rest, needs to be the touchstone of our lives. Shabbat is not just a break that allows us to catch our breath, it is the first of all of our holy days that allows us to find holiness in every other day.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Letting Go

Vayakhel-Pekudei: Being a Dwelling for God

3/15/2012

 
This week's Torah portion describes the completion of the Tabernacle, or Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that the Israelites carried through the wilderness on their way to the Land of Israel. The Mishkan was the dwelling place of God all through those years. 
Picture
Photo by Lunar Caustic
Rabbi Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl, the 18th century Chasidic master known as the Me'or Eynayim, compared the Mishkan to a person's soul, another "dwelling place" for God. Like the Mishkan, there is something pure about the human soul that makes it a fitting place for God to dwell. But our souls do not stay pure in this world. Once we are born, our souls become sullied by our imperfections and failings. How then will God dwell within us?

To answer this, the Me'or Eynayim looks to a famous passage from the Talmud that says that we learned the entire Torah in the womb, only to have it slapped out of us in the moment before we were born:

A light burns above the head of an embryo in the womb and it looks and sees from one end of the world to the other… There is no time in which a person enjoys greater happiness than in those days, for it is said, “O that I were as in months gone by, in the days when God watched over me” (Job 29:2).… The embryo is taught all the Torah from beginning to end… As soon as it sees the light, an angel approaches, slaps it on its mouth and causes it to forget all the Torah completely. (Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 30b)

The Me'or Eynayim observes from this passage that we had the merit to learn the Torah while we were in the womb because, at that time, we were a proper dwelling-place for God, pure and perfect. As we were exposed to the world beyond the womb, though, we had to forget. The angel who slapped us on the lips anticipated the reality of this world. Purity is not so easily achieved in a world of shadows and uncertainty. 

Why did God bother to make the world this way? Why make us with the purity needed to be a vessel for Torah only to take it away from us? Me'or Eynayim answers that it was so we would have the free will to learn Torah painstakingly for ourselves. It was so that we could choose to heed the Torah and earn reward, or ignore the Torah and deserve punishment. Torah cannot work in this world if it is just planted in our brains to direct us like an automaton. We have to choose—and choosing contains the possibility of failing. 

But, in this case, failure is not all bad. Failure offers with it the possibility of repentance, t'shuvah. We do t'shuvah to bring God and Torah back into us, just as it was when we were in the womb. Ironically, we can be even better here than we were in the womb—better in this world of imperfection because here we get to choose Torah. 

We are, like the Mishkan, created to be dwelling places for God. However, being a God-vessel is not easy and it is not automatic for beings that have to contend with the realities of this world. We have to work for it. We have to strive for it. We have to fail and apologize and forgive ourselves over and over again. 

Yet, we do have within ourselves a memory of a time when God and Torah were as easy for us as receiving breath and sustenance through the umbilical cord. We can vaguely recollect the time when God was right there with us, hovering over the Mishkah, a light over our heads, so that we can remember what it is we are striving and struggling to remember.  

When we make our souls into a dwelling place for God, we are actually choosing the choice that was once all we knew.


Other Posts on This Topic:
You are What You Choose to Be
Pekudei: A Love Letter

More Pekudei Thoughts

3/4/2011

 
“Within, it was decked with love.”
-Song of Songs 3:10

The rabbis of antiquity wondered why God needed the Mishkan (the Tabernacle in which God's presence rested). God's presence fills all the world, so what is the Mishkan for? We ask the same question when we ask questions like, "What do we need a synagogue for? Why do we need any kind of religious institution to find God? Isn't God everywhere?" One answer comes from a midrash on Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim Rabba 3:20):

Rabbi Yehoshua of Siknin said in the name of Rabbi Levi: To what can the Ohel Mo’ed be compared? To a cave adjoining the sea, which the sea overflows when it becomes rough. Though the cave is filled, the sea loses nothing. So the tent of meeting was filled with the glory of the divine presence, and yet the world lost nothing of the Shechinah [God's felt presence].

There is nothing intrinsically special about the Mishkan (called the Ohel Mo'ed, "Tent of Meeting," in this passage), just as there is nothing intrinsically special about a synagogue. God doesn't need a special place. We do. We need a place to notice God, like we notice the sea filling a cave on the craggy shores of the sea. The sea is always there, but we fail to notice. We fail to notice God in our lives until we set aside a place that we make special for the purpose of experiencing wonder.

Pekudei: A Love Letter

2/27/2011

 
[In this week's Torah portion, Parashat Pekudei, Moses records the materials used in the Tabernacle (the portable temple that the Israelites carry in the wilderness). Betzalel and Oholiab make the special garments for the Hight Priest—the ephod (apron), the breastplate, the robe and the headpiece. Moses erects the Tabernacle and arranges and sanctifies the instruments of sacrificial worship within it. When Moses completes the Tabernacle, the cloud of God's Presence fills it.]


I opened the door for my beloved...
—Song of Songs 5:6

Beloved,

That little house was the first home of our love—our secret refuge of joy. How long did you spend arranging all our treasures in those cramped rooms? The chandelier sprouting arms like tree branches, the table made from ancient wood, the dishes from your mother's cabinets—I see them sparkle and shine with the far-away colors of remembered light. 

I picture you arrayed in old-fashioned finery—clothes that seemed comically grown-up, gaudy jewels that sparkled on your breast, a gown that flowed like moonbeams to the floor. A shudder takes me as I remember how your sight thrilled me.

We dined in that house on meager meals with the aroma of feasts. The spice of our love drifted through the rooms so thick that we would be sated licking air. On the day we moved in, we looked at each other and no other moment could exist.

In years since, we have lived in many rooms and travelled continents. I have known your sighs in the night, and I have been comforted by the song of your voice in my sorrow. Yet, that little house, the one in the middle of the wilderness of hope and discovery, will always be our best. It was the place where I opened the door to let you in—radiant, young, beautiful—and collapsed with you onto the couches of ecstasy.

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