Journey of Holiness - A Kavvanah for Lekh Lekha

The Torah exhorts us, in a variety of places and ways, to be holy. But what exactly is "holiness," and how do we go about acquiring it?

The Hebrew root ק-ד-ש, which is spun out into many forms throughout Jewish text and liturgy, originally means "separate" or "distinct." Those things which are קדוש / qadosh, "holy," have been set aside for a particular, non-ordinary purpose. The Shabbat, for example, is a day that is set apart from the other six ordinary days of the week. At a Jewish wedding, the bride and groom are joined to each other when the groom says, הרי את מקודשת לי / harei at mequddeshet li, "Behold, you are sanctified to me...", and thus they are set apart from everybody else and committed to each other. And so forth.

From NASA, a satellite photo showing drought in the Fertile Crescent in 2008.

In Parashat Lekh Lekha, Abram is instructed by God to leave his home in what is today Iraq and venture all the way to the other end of the Fertile Crescent to what is today Israel. The Torah tells us neither why Abram was chosen, nor why the destination is Israel; Abram himself does not even seem to know where he is going or why.

But there is no question that Abram's journey is a spiritual one, a quest for holiness that takes him out of his ordinary environment to someplace new, a place where he will be set apart. As the father of monotheism and of two sons from whom Muslims, Christians and Jews see themselves as being descended (at least theologically, if not genetically), Abram is himself becoming holy and creating a new way for all who follow to seek holiness. He is a pioneer of sanctification, one who exemplifies the pursuit of distinctiveness that marks the Abrahamic faiths by taking the extreme path of physical relocation to balance his internal journey.

Fortunately, we do not have to pick up and move to seek holiness. In Judaism, sometimes the act of differentiation that makes us holy is as simple as picking up a book. Now go and learn it.

Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Being Ready for the Call - Friday Kavvanah, 12/30/2011

Having just returned yesterday from Israel, I was up quite early this morning, and it afforded me plenty of quiet time while the family was still asleep.  I read pretty carefully through Parashat Vayyigash, and through my jet-lagged haze spotted the following (Genesis 46:2):

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב יַעֲקֹב; וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּנִי
God called to Israel in a vision by night: "Jacob!  Jacob!"  He answered, "Here I am."

The dialogue is a precise echo of the end of the Aqedah, the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:11):

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, מִן-הַשָּׁמַיִם, וַיֹּאמֶר, אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם; וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּנִי
Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: "Abraham!  Abraham!"  And he answered, "Here I am."

Even the trope marks (the Masoretic accents that historically clarify the text and today indicate chanting melody) are identical, including the "pesiq," the vertical line placed between the repeated names, indicating a luftpause, a break for air that audibly recalls the beat separating them as the story unfolds in real time.

Why the exact repetition?  The biblical author surely wants us to connect the two stories.  Abraham is about to slaughter his son Isaac; his grandson Jacob is about to leave Canaan, the land that has been promised to each of the Patriarchs, to go down to Egypt for Lord knows how long.  Each is a hugely significant moment, lush with personal and national meaning, and the readiness of both characters to answer to God's call is formidable. Both are moments when God's voice is not expected, but clearly needed.

Some Jews come to the synagogue on a regular basis to communicate with God, but how many of us are ready to answer God's call to us when it comes?  Rabbi David Kimhi (aka Radaq, 1160-1235 in Provence) comments that here God calls Jacob's name twice because it had been so many years since Jacob had received any kind of prophecy, and thus he was probably not expecting to hear God's voice again.

Similarly, if God calls on any of us, would we hear it?  Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Ancient and Not-So-Ancient Connections - Thursday Kavvanah, 12/8/11

At the very beginning of the Shaharit / morning service, every day of the year, there is a passage that we generally buzz through quickly without giving it much thought.  But it really should be in BOLD CAPS (if there were capital letters in Hebrew), because it nicely prefaces the act of tefillah / prayer.

The passage (found on page 7 of Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays), mentions that we are partners with God in the berit, the covenant established with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and cites some of the key berit-making events that are taking place in the current run of Torah readings.  And then comes the following:


לְפִיכָךְ אֲנַחְנוּ חַיָּבִים לְהודות לְךָ וּלְשַׁבֵּחֲךָ וּלְפָאֶרְךָ וּלְבָרֵךְ וּלְקַדֵּשׁ וְלָתֵת שֶׁבַח וְהודָיָה לִשְׁמֶךָ
Therefore it is our duty to thank You and praise You, to glorify and sanctify your name.


One source of our obligation to recite words of prayer daily is the connection to the founding ancestors of our tradition.  Tefillah / prayer becomes an act of historical resonance, building a sort of pipeline to the patriarchs and matriarchs and allowing us to receive the benevolence bestowed upon them.


But the motivation that connects us even more powerfully today is, I think, not that of ancient times but of the more recent past.  When I daven, I sometimes like to picture my grandparents, great-grandparents and so on, peeking in through the windows.  We are all the inheritors of a long chain of tradition, unbroken for centuries; it is up to us to claim that tradition.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Eulogize the Living - Friday Kavvanah, 11/18/2011

When I was a senior rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I had a class in homiletics in which I learned, among other things, how to write a hesped / eulogy.  Our teacher, Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, whose father had also been a rabbi, told us about how when he was young they practiced giving eulogies for each other.  One of them would lie on the floor, and the other would stand over him and improvise a hesped.

In the opening lines of Parashat Hayyei Sarah, Abraham mourns for his departed wife Sarah, and depending on how you read the text, probably delivers the first eulogy noted in the Torah.  He channels his grief into words, and to this day we do the same thing at funerals and memorial services, where we recall our loved ones with fondness and remember their better qualities and the happy times that we spent with them.  A good hesped moves us like no other speech, yielding tears and respectful laughter, inspiring reflection, longing, and comfort in the face of loss.

What is perhaps most ironic about the eulogy, however, is that the deceased does not hear the moving, wonderful things that are recited in his/her honor.  Most of us will not hear the most stirring words ever said about us.  A pity, no?

Here is a suggestion: eulogize the ones you love now!  Tell your spouse, your children, your parents, your cousins, your friends how much you love and appreciate them, how much you miss them when they are not around, how fondly you recall all of the good times you have had together.  (Nobody needs to bother to lie on the floor.)

Why wait?  Eulogize the living!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Vayyera: Watch Carefully! - Friday Kavvanah, 11/11/2011

The great 20th-century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber coined the German term "leitwort" ("leading word") to refer to the Hebrew Bible's repetition of a thematic word or root in a specific context.  The leitwort gives us an internal emphasis on a particular concept.

In the case of the opening verses of Parashat Vayyera, Genesis 18:1-2, the leitwort is those words having to do with seeing:


וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו יְהוָה, בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא; וְהוּא יֹשֵׁב פֶּתַח-הָאֹהֶל, כְּחֹם הַיּוֹם  


וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו, וַיַּרְא, וְהִנֵּה שְׁלֹשָׁה אֲנָשִׁים, נִצָּבִים עָלָיו; וַיַּרְא, וַיָּרָץ לִקְרָאתָם מִפֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל, וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ אָרְצָה

1.  The Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot.  

2.  Looking up, he saw three men standing near him.  As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and, bowing to the ground... (New JPS)

Leaving aside the question of whether Abraham sees God or three strangers approaching, what the leitwort brings to our attention is that Abraham is carefully watching.  He is paying attention, and ready to welcome the men into his tent.

I remember distinctly a word that my own childhood rabbi, Rabbi Arthur Rulnick, gave as a piece of advice to my confirmation class somewhere in the mid-1980s: as you grow older and more mature, look carefully at the world around you as you seek your path.  Just as Abraham is watching the area around his home intently (heh heh), so too should we be equally watchful as we move through life.

The Most Welcoming Guy in Canaan - Thursday Kavvanah, 11/10/2011

The beginning of Parashat Vayyera, which we are reading this week, features a fascinating vignette on hospitality.  Abraham is hanging out by the entrance to his tent, when three strangers approach.  He and his wife Sarah hasten to get them food, water, a place to wash the desert off their feet and chill out, and then stand by them patiently as they eat.  Abraham welcomes these people, with whom he has no connection whatsoever, and brings them into his home, no questions asked.

Sometimes, the famously dysfunctional characters of the book of Bereishit / Genesis are undeniably virtuous; this is one of those instances.  The Talmud (Tractate Shabbat 127a) tells us that the mitzvah / commandment of hakhnasat orhim, welcoming visitors into your home, outweighs that of welcoming the Shekhinah, God's presence.

What do we learn from this?  In an age of increasing isolation, when some of us relate more easily to screens than to human faces, this is a time that we must all reach out to others, to make those connections that only people can make, and particularly in the synagogue.  Abraham welcomes the strangers into his tent, and so should we.

Our Jewish Journeys - Thursday Kavvanah, 11/3/2011

Looking back over the course of my four-plus decades, I can see several different paths through my life.

There is the educational path - what I've learned, with whom and from whom.

There is the experiential path - how I have engaged with all of the activities in my life and how I have interpreted them and integrated them into my personality.

There is the emotional path - the relationships that have defined me with respect to others.

And then there is the Jewish path.

Our understanding of and relationship to the way of life that we call Judaism is complex, and it changes as we age.  There are times when we connect with the holiday rituals, there are times when we need prayer, and there are times when reflective study of ancient texts resonates.  Some of us come from other religious  backgrounds to take a Jewish journey.

When Abram receives an order from God to leave home (the title of Parashat Lekh Lekha says it all), he begins what you might call the first Jewish journey.  His physical path takes him from his ancestral home in Ur (in an area that we today call Iraq) to Israel, and then to Egypt, and back to Israel again.  But his internal path takes him even further, from the idolatrous home of his father (one of the most familiar midrashim tells us that his father sold idols for a living) to becoming the patriarch of the first monotheistic nation.  The journey of Abram (later, Abraham - his path yields him a new, improved name) is all-encompassing.

And so is mine.  Where has your journey taken you?

Take the plunge! - Tuesday Kavvanah, 11/1/2011

When I was 29, I was fortunate to have been laid off from my engineering firm in Houston and begin the journey that ultimately led me to the cantorate and to the rabbinate.  At the time, I had no idea where I would end up, but for perhaps the first time in my life, I threw all caution to the wind and re-booted.


Abram (later to become Abraham) faces such a journey in Parashat Lekh Lekha, which we are reading this week.  


 וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ
God said to Abram, "Go forth (lekh lekha) from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. (Gen. 12:1)


Abram is given no further instruction at this time - not where he is going, not how to get there, not how long it will take, and so forth.  And yet he picks up and moves.  As it turns out, the move is good for him and his family, as he is essentially the father of the Israelite people and he lands in Israel.  But he could not have known that from the start.  


Sometimes making a change in life requires seizing that lekh lekha moment, the willingness to take a chance without a clear picture of what is to come.

Kaf Zekhut - The Benefit of the Doubt

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, Oct. 7, 2010.)

Among the stories of Bereshit we find the recurring theme of one righteous person among the wicked many: Noah, who was somewhat less evil than everybody else on Earth, prior to the flood; Abraham, who the midrash tells us was the first to choose monotheism over idolatry; Lot, who was surely no saint, but was the only one in Sodom and Gomorrah to merit being saved. Over and over, the central characters of the Genesis narrative are held up as rare light in gloomy times.

During a class that I was teaching at the Waxman Hebrew High School and Youth House on a recent evening, a student made the claim that all Muslims wanted to kill Jews. Given recent news events, I suppose that it would not be too hard for a twelve-year-old to put this idea together. I would wager that there are a fair number of Jewish adults who believe the same thing.

It is an unavoidable human trait to view groups of people in such simple terms. Our lives are so complicated that we take any available shortcuts for understanding the world. The desire to judge a person’s character based on obvious and yet irrelevant information (color of skin, religion, ethnicity) is simply too tempting.

Non-Jews have for centuries painted Jews with particular stereotypes that we know not to be true; it is difficult for us not to do the same of other groups. The human reality, of course, is that every society, every group, every culture has its own richly-textured fabric of individual personalities and characters. We like to see this in our own peer group, but not in the other. This is perhaps by evolutionary advantage, as it must have made sense to our ancestors to assume that all saber-toothed tigers would attack if given the opportunity, or that we could not trust the guys on the other side of the river who looked funny, made unintelligible sounds, and competed for the same food source.

And so the Torah, divine and yet so human, reinforces this simplistic understanding of the world. Everybody in Sodom and Gomorrah was bad. The generation before the flood deserved to die. So too the Egyptians. Reducing a group to a single adjective (e.g. wicked) might work in the ancient tales of our people, but such thinking is dangerous in today’s world.

I replied to this student that it is unfair to paint “all Muslims” with one brush, and that just as there are Muslims that for sure want to kill Jews or Americans or Christians or other “infidels,” there are far more who do not want to kill anybody. And the same goes for every other group, including our own.

I would prefer that we learn to view the other through the rabbinic lens of Pirqei Avot, where Yehoshua ben Perahya says, “Hevei dan et kol adam lekhaf zekhut.” Give each individual the benefit of the doubt. Only then may we, in the words of the Psalmist, seek peace and pursue it.