וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃
The LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.
This is one of the moste well-known lines in the Torah. Everyone seems to know that Avram was called by God to take a hike and find himself and his God.
There are, to me, several interesting things in this phrase. First of all, I have to ask the question "Why did he have to leave?" If God could be found anywhere, why the necessity to leave Ur of Chaldees? The commentators say that he needed to leave the influence of his pagan past. I doubt it, frankly. Since there was no monotheism at that time and everywhere was pagan or idolotrous, then wherever he went would be exaclty the same. That's the first problem.
The second issue is his name. Avram's name is not the name we usually know him by. Rather we know him by 'Abraham.' However, it was not yet time for God to change his name to Abraham. I wonder why.
Here is what I think about both these issues: Avrum had to leave where he lived because whatever was drawing him and tugging at him could not be discovered in his one-camel town. There was simply too much history there and perhaps he felt he could not be taken seriously or create for himself the environment to build a people. Lots of people feel this way and so we should not be surprised that Abram felt the same way, too.
Our children grow up and whether they end up living in the same town or nearby or they leave the state or the country, the dynamic is the same. They stake their own ground. They establish themselves and their own lives on their own terms. In effect, they change their names from "so and so's child" to their own 'name' - i.e., reputation which is theirs and theirs alone. The name they establish for themselves is far more important than the one their parents gave to them.
The same was true for Abraham. He had to deal with kings, with covenants of birds, with a Pharoah, with a wife, a maiden, a child, a captive nephew and other challenges. He was clearly out of his protective environment. He was in the 'real world.'
And lest we think that he somehow was perfect, he was not. He bowed to a jealous wife's demands that he send his child and his mother away (Hagar and Ishamel) and he lied to a Pharoah about his wife (Sarai) being his sister. Living outside his native land and out of his father's house held real challenges and difficult times.
But despite all the troubles, Abram, soon to be Abraham embraced what he had done and learned to live with his decisions. I am sure it was not easy. The road to establishing one's own name is filled with pot-holes (or in Abram's case, bitumen pits - see Genesis 14:10), conficts, and compromises. Maybe what Abraham's story is, is a lesson in how things turned out in the end. In other words, if we were to judge Abraham at any of these challenging times, maybe he would be a failure in our eyes. The paradox is that we have to judge a life when the life is over, not when it is being punctuated by its ups and downs.
Our lives are the same way. We are judged, like Abraham, on what we build. Our failures are preserved and no amount of spin can remove the truth about our deceptions and bad decisions. But failing is not the same as being a failure. Doing lousy things does not make us lousy people. We all fail at times but, like Abraham, we hear the call to reach higher and holier and we are set upon a trail that is filled with difficulties. These are not tests, they are facts of life and how we walk that trail and look back on the good we have done while trying to heal the hurt we have caused and avoid that same hurt in the future is the thing that will give us the name that will accompany us forever. It is the only thing we can take with us to the grave. Protect it well.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
אֶת־קַשְׁתּי נָתַתִּי בֶּֽעָנָן וְהָֽיְתָה לְאוֹת בְּרִית בֵּינִי וּבֵין הָאָֽרֶץ
וַיּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים זֹאת אֽוֹת־הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִי נֹתֵן
בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם וּבֵין כָּל־נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה אֲשֶׁר אִתְּכֶם לְדֹרֹת עוֹלָם׃
I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.12 God further said, "This is the sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature with you, for all ages to come.
The sign of the covenant between God and humanity was established after the Flood. That seems to indicate that, according to the Bible, there were no such things as rainbows before the Flood! I find this very hard to believe as it would indicate that the laws of physics suddenly changed after the Flood and that, all of a sudden, there were would be the refractive characteristics of water acting upon light that would be different after the Flood as opposed to before!
So, once again, we have a problem in the text. How are we to confront this problem?
I would like to offer one possibility.
We look at the things in all sorts of ways. What may appear to you and I as a tree may be a special place where a first kiss occurred. A knick-knack on a shelf may mean nothing to most people but, to its owner and protector, might be a valuable connection to the past. A person, a family, a people can all determine what something means to them because they look at something in a whole new way. The same thing happened to rainbow. The laws of physics did not change; rather the way the biblical authors looked at that refracted light made the rainbow something special, indeed. It was now a promise of something bigger not simply the aftereffects of a summer rain.
Rashi, the mediaeval commentator par excellence, points out that when the ext says, "for all ages to come" there is a problem with the text. Here is what he says: "for all generations to come" It [the word דֹרֹת] is written defectively [without the letter “vav”] because there were generations that did not require the sign because they were completely righteous, such as the generation of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, and the generation of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Gen. Rabbah 35:2).
Rashi is citing the Midrash that tells us that the rainbow is a sign for all generations to warn them about the consequences of their actions. But the word "generations" is written defectively to teach that there are generations that did not need these warnings for they were completely righteous.
I don't know of any completely righteous generation or completely righteous people. But our tradition teaches that, indeed, there were at least two totally righteous generations. We can learn something from this.
Maybe we can extend the meaning of the rainbow a bit based on what Rashi teaches us: Perhaps the rainbow can be a sign that impels us to become one of those generations that need not be given such a sign. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were so righteous that we didn't need any such warnings?
It would be wonderful never to need such warnings. But I am afraid we are a long way from such a time. Our earth is getting more polluted by the minute. We are in danger of contaminating our environments beyond their ability to repair themselves in a timely fashion, and we seem to be intent of consuming without regard to consequences.
When the earth was destroyed by the Flood, the Bible tells us that "violence filled the earth" and God washed it away with the waters of the Flood. There is violence upon the earth and there is violence to the earth. The rainbow stills stands as a visible warning that the earth can take only so much violence to it. God help us ever we ever look up and don't see the rainbow after the rain - for it would mean that even the clouds are poisoned. The next destruction of the earth will not come from God - it will come from us and the last words uttered by God may very well be, "Why didn't you listen?"
וַיּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים זֹאת אֽוֹת־הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִי נֹתֵן
בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם וּבֵין כָּל־נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה אֲשֶׁר אִתְּכֶם לְדֹרֹת עוֹלָם׃
I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.12 God further said, "This is the sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature with you, for all ages to come.
The sign of the covenant between God and humanity was established after the Flood. That seems to indicate that, according to the Bible, there were no such things as rainbows before the Flood! I find this very hard to believe as it would indicate that the laws of physics suddenly changed after the Flood and that, all of a sudden, there were would be the refractive characteristics of water acting upon light that would be different after the Flood as opposed to before!
So, once again, we have a problem in the text. How are we to confront this problem?
I would like to offer one possibility.
We look at the things in all sorts of ways. What may appear to you and I as a tree may be a special place where a first kiss occurred. A knick-knack on a shelf may mean nothing to most people but, to its owner and protector, might be a valuable connection to the past. A person, a family, a people can all determine what something means to them because they look at something in a whole new way. The same thing happened to rainbow. The laws of physics did not change; rather the way the biblical authors looked at that refracted light made the rainbow something special, indeed. It was now a promise of something bigger not simply the aftereffects of a summer rain.
Rashi, the mediaeval commentator par excellence, points out that when the ext says, "for all ages to come" there is a problem with the text. Here is what he says: "for all generations to come" It [the word דֹרֹת] is written defectively [without the letter “vav”] because there were generations that did not require the sign because they were completely righteous, such as the generation of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, and the generation of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Gen. Rabbah 35:2).
Rashi is citing the Midrash that tells us that the rainbow is a sign for all generations to warn them about the consequences of their actions. But the word "generations" is written defectively to teach that there are generations that did not need these warnings for they were completely righteous.
I don't know of any completely righteous generation or completely righteous people. But our tradition teaches that, indeed, there were at least two totally righteous generations. We can learn something from this.
Maybe we can extend the meaning of the rainbow a bit based on what Rashi teaches us: Perhaps the rainbow can be a sign that impels us to become one of those generations that need not be given such a sign. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were so righteous that we didn't need any such warnings?
It would be wonderful never to need such warnings. But I am afraid we are a long way from such a time. Our earth is getting more polluted by the minute. We are in danger of contaminating our environments beyond their ability to repair themselves in a timely fashion, and we seem to be intent of consuming without regard to consequences.
When the earth was destroyed by the Flood, the Bible tells us that "violence filled the earth" and God washed it away with the waters of the Flood. There is violence upon the earth and there is violence to the earth. The rainbow stills stands as a visible warning that the earth can take only so much violence to it. God help us ever we ever look up and don't see the rainbow after the rain - for it would mean that even the clouds are poisoned. The next destruction of the earth will not come from God - it will come from us and the last words uttered by God may very well be, "Why didn't you listen?"
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Parashat Bereshit
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When God began to create heaven and earth --
We have just completed the Jewish New Year and, according to tradition, we are in the year 5770. What, exactly, is this number supposed to represent? Simply this: the creation of the universe.
It is patently clear that the universe is a whole lot older than 5770 years old despite the silly efforts of those literalists who go to great lengths to prove the biblical account accurate. For instance, we know that the edge of the visible universe is some 13.5 billion light years away. It may be much, much bigger than that but the light from the edge of the expanding universe is moving slower than the expansion of space so we will never, ever see the light from beyond that barrier. At any rate, the universe is at least 13.5 billion years old. How then do we justify celebrating 5770 years of the universe with a straight face?
The year 5770 is traditional since if we were to add up all the years in the bible from the kings and prophets and so forth and count backwards to the story of creation we get a number which, when added up with the subsequent years to the present, equals 5770. Our problem persists, though. After all, the premise that the universe began 6000 years ago is simply incorrect so how can we use a false chronology to prove that the chronology is right! It is a circular and flawed argument. So how do we look at the year 5770?
I can't take it literally, of course, and I suggest that you don't take it literally, either. If you do, you will be consciously repressing the truth of scientific fact and I doubt very much God wants us to ignore the realities of the universe.
But if we look at the year 5770 as the number of years ago that the nascent Jewish people began to give rise to a sophisticated awareness of covenant and responsibility and the total number of years that our people have been struggling with God (and God with us!) then we have a much more meaningful number. 5770 becomes sort of a mile marker of our growing awareness of God and not of the beginning of the world.
The struggle to know God is a miniscule moment of awareness in the history of the universe. 5770 years out of 13.5 billion is almost insignificant. But 'almost insignificant' does not mean 'totally insignificant'. For those 5770 years the Jewish people has changed the world and has created a civilization that continues to inspire and challenge all humanity. That in itself is a cause worth celebrating. So, let's celebrate...Happy birthday world!
When God began to create heaven and earth --
We have just completed the Jewish New Year and, according to tradition, we are in the year 5770. What, exactly, is this number supposed to represent? Simply this: the creation of the universe.
It is patently clear that the universe is a whole lot older than 5770 years old despite the silly efforts of those literalists who go to great lengths to prove the biblical account accurate. For instance, we know that the edge of the visible universe is some 13.5 billion light years away. It may be much, much bigger than that but the light from the edge of the expanding universe is moving slower than the expansion of space so we will never, ever see the light from beyond that barrier. At any rate, the universe is at least 13.5 billion years old. How then do we justify celebrating 5770 years of the universe with a straight face?
The year 5770 is traditional since if we were to add up all the years in the bible from the kings and prophets and so forth and count backwards to the story of creation we get a number which, when added up with the subsequent years to the present, equals 5770. Our problem persists, though. After all, the premise that the universe began 6000 years ago is simply incorrect so how can we use a false chronology to prove that the chronology is right! It is a circular and flawed argument. So how do we look at the year 5770?
I can't take it literally, of course, and I suggest that you don't take it literally, either. If you do, you will be consciously repressing the truth of scientific fact and I doubt very much God wants us to ignore the realities of the universe.
But if we look at the year 5770 as the number of years ago that the nascent Jewish people began to give rise to a sophisticated awareness of covenant and responsibility and the total number of years that our people have been struggling with God (and God with us!) then we have a much more meaningful number. 5770 becomes sort of a mile marker of our growing awareness of God and not of the beginning of the world.
The struggle to know God is a miniscule moment of awareness in the history of the universe. 5770 years out of 13.5 billion is almost insignificant. But 'almost insignificant' does not mean 'totally insignificant'. For those 5770 years the Jewish people has changed the world and has created a civilization that continues to inspire and challenge all humanity. That in itself is a cause worth celebrating. So, let's celebrate...Happy birthday world!
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