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CHUMASH CANDESCENCE
PARASHA EMOR
LEVITICUS 21:00-24:23
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
"Don't Follow Leaders, Watch Those Parking Meters"
(Bob Dylan, Subterranean Home Sick Blues)
Judaism is a beautiful religion--and much more than that--it is a
wondrous way of life. One of cornerstones of Judaism is continuous learning and
exploration.
We are indeed the people of the Book--and of many books. Judaism gives us
an obligation to study and to question. While the Torah has literary
allusions to us being the "sheep" of God, we are certainly not expected
to act like cattle. We are the children of Israel, and we need to
remember always that Jacob received his new name because he wrestled with
God.
As Jews, and especially as modern Jews, we need to reevaluate continually
and personally our relationships to God and to our traditions.
King David asked in Psalm 27 to be lead "on the path of integrity." As
long as we strive to stay on this path, we will maintain the true essence
of a Jew, which is to have moral and ethical direction.
When Judaism encountered the modernity of enlightenment and emancipation
in the late 1700s the intellectual walls that we erected were
collapsing along with the political, social, and physical (ghetto)
walls. In Hebrew, enlightenment is "haskalah," from the root word
s-kh-l," to understand. Understanding and its partner, wisdom (binah in Hebrew),
brought with it the obligations of continual study. The Reform movement
was Judaism's eventual response to these transformations in Europe.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant saw enlightenment as "the human
being's release from self-imposed tutelage." Kant meant that we as humans
tend to accept an external authority as our guide in determining how we
are to believe and to live. It implied that men take the easy way out and
invent self-imposed rules to avoid grappling with philosophical issues.
Many Jews, too, had forgotten how to wrestle with issues and were content
to listen to their schtetle's rebbe for advice and wisdom.
Politically, these two movements of enlightenment and emancipation saw
the abandonment of the divine right of kings. This was replaced by Thomas Hobbes's doctrine of the social
contract whereby the state was founded on agreement among people. The
people decided on an order that would protect their rights and interests.
This lead to both the American (1776) and the French Revolutions (1789).
As Americans and as Jews we must stay educated or our rights of
self-determination can and will be limited.
This week's parasha talks about the period known as the "Counting of the
Omer." During the period from Passover to Shavuot we traditionally study
a book of the Mishna called Pirket Avot, Chapters (or Teachings or
Ethics) of the Fathers. You
can find about 20 percent of this text on pages 16-28 in
our Gates of Prayer sidurem (prayer books) and 100% in every other sidur.
"The world is sustained by three things: by the Torah, by worship, and by deeds of loving kindness"
(1:02). "Do not say when I have leisure time I will study as you may
never have any leisure" (2:05). Why do I remind us of this in this
week's d'var Torah?
"You shall not desecrate [lo te-chal-lu] my Holy Name [shem]" (Lev.
22:32). The concept of "chillul ha Shem" is now introduced to us.
Desecration of God's name according to Talmud Yoma 86A is one of the most
serious of sins and one for which it is the most difficult to atone.
As Jews we are to know what is proper man-to-man behavior and not let anyone lead
us astray from this regardless of their title. We saw in history how Pope
Urban II said, "Deus vault" (God wills it), and the Crusades began. We
saw in recent times how a rabbi told his student that Prime Minister Itzchak
Rabin was a "rodef," a stalker against the Jewish people, and Rabin was
assassinated. These are the true "chillul ha Shem"s. This is
why we need to be informed modern Jews so that we cannot be led astray.
A most interesting case of chillul ha Shem is unfolded in southern
New Jersey. A local rabbi was arrested some time ago on charges of killing
his wife. He did not admit to the killing, but did admit to three affairs
with his congregants whom he was counseling. This happened in 1994.
A male congregant of the rabbi,
whom he had also counseled, came forth to the police and confessed to
the murder. However, he stated that his rabbi allegedly told him to
murder the rebbitzin because she was someone who "hated Israel." This the
rabbi allegedly said would make the murder justifiable. In addition,
the rabbi promised to get this fellow a job with the Mossad, Israel's
intelligence service.
Now how many of you are seeing this rabbi with a long, white flowing
beard dressed in black? Well, please erase that image from your eyes. The
rabbi and his congregant are members of the CCAR and URJ. What is
so perverse about this, besides the murder, is that the alleged murderer,
whether his rabbi told him to do it or not, thought that this is how
religion works. It is just as sick as a Jew gunning down Moslems in
prayer in Hebron, Moslems car-bombing Jews, Protestants and Catholics
killing each other in Ireland, and Moslems and Hindus fighting in the
Indian subcontinent.
The rabbis in Talmud Tractate Kiddushin 46A tell
us we should always consider ourselves to be in equipoise, where one
positive action will bring salvation, but one sin could bring
condemnation. We must think. We must study. We must grapple. Bernard Shaw
said, "most people would rather die than think, and most do."
The rabbi and his co conspirator congregant were eventually found guilty and serving time. His dead wife was our baker in NJ, and a piece of her wedding cake, a wheatless chocolate torte, is still in our freezer. Never did we think a slice of her cake would outlast Diane, OMB.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow recently wrote that chillul ha shem literally means
the hollowing out of the Name of God. It means one is taking all the
life out of the Name while pretending it is still there, like a hollow
tree. He says "it is acting in such a way to teach Jews and non-Jews
that a profoundly anti-religious act is carried out for the sake of God."
This is why the rabbis in Tractate Yoma of the Talmud said chillul ha
Shem is the worst of sins.
As the rabbis said in Pirket Avot, quoted above, study is one of the
three pillars on which the world rests. As we can see from above, these
words are not just hyperbole. Judaism has a long-standing tradition that
when the Messiah comes, the law will be changed. And Judaism has had its share
of false messiahs that have attracted large numbers of Jewish followers.
Jacob Frank and Sabbetai Zvi were two of these false saviors. In the
Midrash Aleph Bait of Rabbi Akiva 3:27 it states, "the Holy One, blessed
be He, will expound to all the meaning of a new Torah which He will give
through the Messiah." In Mishna Ecclesiasties Rab. 11:1, Rabbi Hizquaya
in the name of Rabbi Simon bar Zibdi said, "The whole Torah which you will
learn in this world is vanity compared to the Torah of the world to
come."
In the Yemenite Midrash p. 349, the rabbis say "the messiah
will sit in the supernal House of Study and all those who walk on earth
will come and sit before him to hear a new Torah and new Commandments."
Furthermore in Halakhot Gadolot it states that. "Elijah will come in the
Messianic age and explain and expound all the secrets of the Torah and
all that which is crooked and distorted in it." Will we and our children
be able to debate intellectually with those who wish to teach us to
distort our teachings if we do not study continually?
In teaching the rules of the Omer, our parasha in Lev. 23:15 states,
"you shall count for yourselves." We have an obligation not to trust others to
count for us or to lead us in counting.
The count starts on the second night of Pesach and ends on the 50th day on Shavuot. Shavuot, as you
recall, traditionally is when we received the Torah on Mt Sinai. The
omer was a measure of barley, about 3 and a third dry quarts of grain,
which we were commanded to bring to the Temple as an offering. Unlike
our elementary school days, where we counted "down" the days left of
school, we Jews count up in anticipation of the receipt of the Torah.
Why were we commanded to count for ourselves (lo-chem)? There is no
benefit to God for our action. We are to use these 50 days to refine
ourselves to get ready for the Torah. The Torah uses the word
ve-so-phar-to for counting. Sepher connotes books and study. Sephirah has
the same root as sapphire, a clear jewel. We are to try to shine like a
jewel in our studies.
We do not just count, as Rabbi Dovid Green has
written. We as Jews must make each day count. The 50 days of the Sephirot
Ha Omer (counting of the omer) lead us to the Kabballot Ha Torah (the
receiving of the Torah). The omer counting is also the period of time in
which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai revealed the hidden secrets of the Zohar
and Kabballah circa 80 CE.
The Sepher Yetzirah is one of the most famous texts of the Kabballah.
It was written in 200 CE. It means "Book of Formation." Rabbi Judah Ha
Levi in 1120 wrote that this text "teaches us the existence of a single
divine power by showing us that in the bosom of variety and multiplicity
there is unity and harmony and that such a universal concord could only
arise from the rule of a Supreme Unity."
Part of this book is the "Fifty Gates of Binah" (Understanding). These 50 gates correspond to each of the
50 days from Pesach to Shavuot. It is said in a Midrash that Moses
"only" achieved 49 of these gates. The Kabbalists said that one must pass
through these 50 gates before attempting to attain the 32 Paths of
Wisdom.
The 50th gate is knowing God, the Ayn Sof. Ayn in Hebrew means "no thing"
as God is beyond existence. Sof means "without end." God has no real
attributes because they can manifest only within existence, and existence
is finite, and God is infinite. The kabballah says the reason for
existence is that "God wished to behold God." The previous phase of
nonexistence was a "time" when "face did not gaze upon face." God then of
His own free will, withdrew His absolute all, the Ayn Sof. This
contraction is called zimzum by the kabballists. The rabbis say, based on
this concept, "God's place is the world, but the world is not God's
place."
The 32nd Path of Wisdom, in comparison, is called Administrative
Intelligence. It is the wisdom to direct and administer the motions of
the planets in their proper courses. Thirty-two is written in Hebrew as
the letters lamed-beth, and these are the last and first letters of the
Chumash.
The number 32 is obtained 2 to the fifth power. We can see
easily that the path to wisdom and understanding is never ending. Laib, LB,
as a Hebrew word, means heart. Thus, knowledge and wisdom, enlightenment
and emancipation, begin in our hearts with the love of God, love of our
fellows, and the love of study. This parallels the verse in Pirket Avot
quoted above in this d'var.
Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist wrote, "You trust your unconscious
as if it were a loving father. But it is inhuman and it needs the human mind
to function usefully. The unconscious is useless without the human mind.
It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual
destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the
conscious and the unconscious."
As King David wrote in Psalm 139:13, "It was You who created my inmost self,
and put me together in my mother's
womb." As informed modern Jews, committed to study, we or our children,
will never, to quote Dylan again, "need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows."
Shabbat Shalom,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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