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RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: LEVITICUS 19:01-20:27:PARASHA KEDOSHIM:Back to the Garden
LEVITICUS 19:01-20:27
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
"Trying to Get Back to the Garden"
In this week's Torah portion entitled "Kedoshim," we read many of the
wondrous man-to-man laws that help define our ethical relationships to
one another and thereby form the basis for our civilization's codes of
legal and subscribed behaviors. The word "kedoshim" is translated into
English as "holy." The root word, however, comes from the Hebrew word for
"set aside." While it is a virtual impossibility for any flesh and blood
human to be truly holy, it is certainly possible for each of us to set
aside a part of ourselves for holiness.
What is notable in this portion of Leviticus is that there are few
priestly rituals listed. As we have seen so far, the sacrificial
rituals and the priestly rules have made up the bulk of this third book
of the Chumash. We therefore get a broad hint on how to achieve
spirituality during our sojourn on earth. We seem to be told that the
way to achieve closeness to God is by doing good to our fellow men and
treating them with honesty and respect.
In pasuk (verse) 19:18 we read: "you shall love your fellow as
yourself--I am God." How can we be commanded to love? What exactly is
"our fellow"? Is this mitzvah so important that God had to remind us
that He indeed is God? Why did Rabbi Akiva say this is "the great
principle of the Torah"? Why did the medieval Jewish mystic Judah the
Pious say that this will be the one question God will ask of us when we
seek admittance into Heaven? Why did the student Yeshu of Nazareth,
called Jesus today, say that this mitzvah is second only to the command
to love God?
In the 950-year-old text Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya ibn Paquda
devotes his 925-page book to the concept of obeying the commandment "to
love." Before we can love our fellow, we must accept the other
commandment of the love of God. He asks us to understand that whatever we
have is a gift--or better stated--a loan, from God. We should never lose
sight of our love for Him. We must further understand that all humans are
God's children and beloved equally by Him. We can reach a conclusion that
by loving others, we are helping to repay God for his gifts to us. Since
His gifts are really just loans, we are only just in an infinitesimal way
beginning to thank God by helping another with our time, resources,
energies, and emotions. Can one ever fully thank our Maker for the gift
of life itself?
The Hebrew word ray-eh-cha has been translated as "your fellow," "your
friend," or "your neighbor." This beautiful mitzvah has been colored by
the words preceding it in the first part of the verse. They are
"you shall not bear a grudge against the children of your people" (b'nai
amekah). When the verse continues and uses the word rayehcha, are we to
believe that this love is just to be directed for our "fellow Jew," or
to our "fellow human neighbor" in our earthly home?
One can certainly not speak for God in today's age. Traditionally we
believe that our prophets were inspired divinely. They have made it quite
clear to us in their writings that God meant by rayehcha, all of our
fellow humans, not just our fellow Jews. As Orthodox rabbi and
psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Twerski posits, Judaism teaches that spiritual
drives are an expression of the neshemah (soul). The Torah states that
when God created man, He "breathed the breath of life into him" (Gen.
2:07). The Zohar, the text of the Kabbalah, points out that when one
exhales, he or she exhales something from within himself or herself.
Thus, God--by breathing a breath of life into man--put something of
Himself into each one of us. The human spirit is therefore part of God
Himself.
Since God is absolute unity, all souls are one, and all humans are one
spirit. Since we are separate individuals we have separate physical
bodies, but our souls are attached. In other words, mankind is one in
spirit, but many in corporeality. By loving all of our fellow humans,
the Zohar teaches, we are striving for the essence of Judaism. We are
emphasizing our spiritual soul that would keep us together rather than
feeding our physical bodies with pleasures, which keep us apart.
When King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he specifically
asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who came to the Temple (Kings I
8:41-43). The Temple was the universal center of spirituality that the
prophet Isaiah called the "house of ALL nations." The service at the
Temple on the week of Sukkot featured 70 bull offerings corresponding to
each of the 70 nations of the world. The sages said, with hyperbole, that
if Rome knew how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they
would have never destroyed it.
When our rabbis finally wrote the Talmud,1000 years in the making, in 500 C.E., the concept of loving equally the Jew
and non-Jew was reinterpreted. To some sages, loving your fellow, became
loving a fellow Jew. Ahavath rayehcha became ahavath Israel. Loving the
non-Jewish stranger (ger) became loving the Jewish convert. This is not
what the Torah or the prophets taught. But because the rabbis of the
Talmud during this period of harsh diasperia, said their word was the Oral Law directly from Mt. Sinai, this
reasoning found its way into some teachings and traditions.
The Torah is very clear in that on a religious level a convert to Judaism
is as Jewish as a born Jew. It was assumed in Torah times that when a
non-Jewish woman married a Jewish man, she automatically became Jewish,
as were her future children. Conversion ceremonies, independent of
marriage, first appeared in the post-biblical period. We also see that in
Torah law, a non-Jew was equal to a Jew and should be loved and treated
equally. Judaism via our Torah does not distinguish, on a human level,
between those who are Jewish, and the non-Jews who live among us. On a
religious level, the Torah does not distinguish between one who is born
Jewish or one who converts either by ceremony or by marriage.
However, by the time our Talmud was put into written form this universality of the
prophets was amended in some ways. In 500 CE Judaism was in much danger.
We were dominated by the Roman Empire. We were homeless and
unfortunately, but understandably, enemy-centered for mere spiritual and
corporal survival.
William James once said, "A great many people think they are thinking.
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." Our Talmud--some
SMALL PARTS of which are embarrassing to us now in the third millennium CE--has
some statements in it that if read OUT OF CONTEXT can be hurtful not only
to others but to ourselves. Both Jews and non-Jews have read the Talmud
out of its historical time frame with disastrous results. We need to
remember, before continuing, that the Gemorah part of the Talmud records
all opinions of the rabbis, not just the ones that became law.
Talmud Bavli Tractate Moed Kattan 17A, suggests that if a Jew is tempted to do evil,
he should to go to a non-Jewish city where he is not known. Tractate Bava Metzia
114B speaks of Jews being only truly human (designated men) and Tractate
Berachoth 58A speaks of having sex with a non-Jewish woman as having sex
with a "she-ass." Tractate Bava Kamma 37B says that if a Jew's ox gores a
Canaanite's ox there is no liability, but if the Canaanite's ox gores a
Jew's ox, there is full liability.
The Talmudic rabbis quote Ezekiel 34:31 as their proof text that gentiles
are not men (adam) as Jews are, because God says that His sheep (Jews)
are "men." But when did Ezekiel write? He wrote during the Babylonian
captivity, and he was using poetry as a rallying cry to let Israel know
that their God would soon rescue them. The Babylonians were the preying
wild beasts, which Ezekiel had to refer to carefully as Egyptians, and
the Jews were the set upon sheep. This was all metaphor.
We must remember that the Talmud was written during some very tough
times for our people .It is a 1000 year text. There was understandable hatred in many rabbis'
hearts for the pagan Romans. Their concern was NOT against the early
Christians. Gentile meant Roman. But as the Talmud centuries later found
its way into the hands of the church fathers, these statements about
gentiles were forced to be amended. Maimonides, in his book on the
Talmud, called the Mishna Torah, says it is a religious duty, IN the
Talmud, to "eradicate traitors, minnim, and apikorsim" such as the
Saducces (who denied the oral law and were against the Pharisees, the
forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism), apostates, and followers of Jesus. The
Rambam continues "as for gentiles, the basic Talmudic principle is that
their lives must not be saved, although it is also forbidden to murder
them outright.' The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Avodah Zarah 26B expresses
this maxim as "gentiles are neither to be lifted out of a well, nor
hauled down into it." The beginning of the second millennium when the
Rambam wrote was bellicose time. Writing these pugnacious words in the
relative safety of Moorish Spain or Muslim Egypt was the only safe way
Maimonides, a Jew, could express his outrage at the wholesale slaughter
and discrimination the Church was rendering to his people.
Tractate Bava Metzia says that if a Jew finds a lost object of a gentile it does
not have to be returned. Be mindful that all of these quotes are taken
out of context. For example, it is a general Talmudic principle that any
object that is found that the owner has given up hope of recovery is
"keepable." Since Jews and non-Jews lived separately, the likelihood of
a non-Jew having hope of finding a lost, unidentifiable object in a
Jewish town was nil. Hence, the object was "attainable" by the finder.
The Talmud says we should go out of our way to find this gentile and
return the object. But as we have seen so many times before, when any
group interprets the Torah through their eyes (especially when they say
they know the right and only way of interpretation), hurtful behaviors
can result. We need to understand always that the Talmud is the work of
MEN, who were doing what they thought was best for our people during
the tumultuous times it was written. We as modern liberal Jews do not
accept the Talmud or the books of the rabbis of the Middle Ages as
divine. In Jewish Spiritual Renewal we work on ourselves with God' aid to become the best loving people we can be and use our texts for the parts within them to help us in this direction.
When every word of the Talmud is assumed to be the word of God, CERTAIN
rabbis can then give license for bigotry. (Thank heaven these rabbis are
very small in number.) Ordained, hateful behavior gets
directed not only toward non-Jews, but to Jews who they label as
apikorsim or minnim. These are code words for assimilated or liberal Jews
who deny that the Talmud, and works that stem from it (like the Rambam's
text), are divine. In Aramaic, "shitta sidhre" means the six orders
(sections) of the Mishna (oral law). The term is abbreviated sh's and
pronounced shas. Is it any wonder why the Shas party of Israel spews
forth such vile antiliberal, anti-Jewish, and anti-Arab verbiage? They
believe they are just quoting God as revealed in the Talmud.
As written in traditional Pesach Haggadot, when we open the door at the
end of the seder to welcome Elijah, one says in a loud voice, "Pour out
Thy wrath upon the Gentiles that know Thee not, and upon the kingdoms
that call not upon Thy name, for they have consumed Jacob and laid waste
his habitation. Pour out Thy rage upon them and let Thy fury overtake
them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the
Eternal." One can easily see how this prayer can be misunderstood by our
Christian neighbors.
Our Haggadah, codified in Talmudic times, is referring to the Roman
pagans who conquered us and sent us into the Diaspora. No wonder the
Christian Church in the Middle Ages demanded that we keep our doors open
during our seders! The liberal movements DELETED this section of the
Passover ceremony. What is overlooked is the following fascinating
Midrash that says that many first-born Egyptians ran to the land of
Goshen to sleep in the beds of the Jews to escape the Angel of Death. And
it worked! They were spared death and lived. It was not the Paschal
lamb's blood on the door that saved them, but our unconditional Jewish
hospitality and love for our fellow man. Is this an answer to Noah's
prayer in Genesis 9:27: "May God extend Japheth and may he live in the
tents of Shem"?
When Baruch Goldstein, on Purim 1994, gunned down 40 Palestinian
civilians, including children, he was quoted as saying that his rebbe
told him the Talmud said that "all Arabs are dogs." Professor Ehud
Sprinzak described Goldstein's and his rebbe's philosophy in a1994 New
York Daily News interview. "They believe it is God's will that they
commit violence against 'goyem' (non-Jews)." Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg
declared in a 1989 New York Times interview, "We have to recognize that
Jewish blood and the blood of a goy are NOT the same thing." Rabbi Yaacov
Perrin stated in a 1994 New York Daily News report that, "One million
Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." Presently, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,
head of Israel's ultra orthodox Shas party, is being considered for
criminal prosecution for calling liberal education minister Yossie Sarid
"Satan, Haman, and Amalek" and saying he should be "wiped out."
His speech was received with "thunderous applause and shouts of
approval." So much for the love and the universality of man as spoken to
us by our prophets.
"As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected
back to him by another" (Prov. 27:19). As related in Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat
31A, when Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up Judaism, he said that the love
of one's neighbor was most important. He said the rest of the Torah was
commentary that needed to be studied. The Talmud makes it very clear that
the Adam and Eve story was to teach us that we all come from the same
first man and woman so that no one can say that their ancestors were
better than another's. But how do we love another? We begin not by
receiving from him, but by giving to him. When you give to another, a
part of you becomes incorporated in that other person. He becomes an
extension of you!
Rayehcha did mean "all" fellows even at the time we were being formed as
a nation in the wilderness of Sinai. We were a mixed multitude of
peoples, not just the children of Jacob. Leviticus 19:33-34 reminds us
that we were strangers (ger) in Egypt and to love the stranger that
resides with us as ourselves. There was no Torah double standard. A
COMPLETE read of the Talmud shows there was no Talmudic double standard
either. The Mishna says that saving a single soul (Jew or non-Jew) was
equally important (although there are some versions of the Mishna, i.e.,
the traditional approved Art Scroll edition, in Tractate Sanhedren 37A,
that say "who saves a single soul of Israel.") The rabbis taught that we
do bikur cholem (visit the sick) to Jew and non-Jew alike, as well as all
acts of tzadakah (poorly translated as charity).
The thirteenth-century Spanish rabbi, Nachmanides, the Ramban, speaks
sarcastically of "a boor in the realm of Torah." This boor is a learned
and observant Jew who has not violated a single mitzvah but still brings
disgrace by misinterpretation. It is clear to so many that love of your
rayehcha is a universal decree. There is a Judaic concept, not often
taught, of Yirei ha Shem. This idea states that there are other ways to
reach God outside of Judaism. Judaism is not the only path to
spirituality. The Midrash Rabbah comments on Deuteronomy 34:10--one of
the last verses of the Chumash--which says, "And there never again arose
a prophet in Israel like Moses." The Midrash says this means that in
Israel a prophet like Moses did not rise again, but among the other
nations of the world there arose other prophets of Moses' stature. In
his introduction to Duties of the Heart, Ibn Paquda, who is referred to
above, says that he drew on teachings from the Muslims and the ancient
Greeks.
God is Infinite. Can any religion really say that they know the true way
to God? The twentieth-century physicist, Heisenberg, who was in charge of
wartime Germany's race for the atomic bomb, states in his "Uncertainty
Principle" that when one measures the location of a subatomic particle,
the act of measuring it, changes its location. When we read of a religion
or philosophy that with "authority" states that it knows the mind of God,
we must be careful. One can reach spiritual heights by going through an
intermediary (like Jesus, if one is Christian). You can do the same by
following ritual minutia. Or, as spiritual renewal Judaism teaches, one can study,
and determine what paths work well at various points in one's life. The
Talmud teaches that "the righteous of all nations have an equal share in
the world to come." The parasha at hand this week, called Kedoshim, gives us clear
insights on attaining a righteous, set-aside "holiness."
A wonderful Midrash asks "What is the tzelem Elohim, the image of God, in
which all humans are made?" It answers that when an ordinary king like
the Roman emperor puts his image on a coin, all the coins get minted the
same and are therefore identical. But when God, the ultimate Ruler, puts
His image on a coin (humans), we each come out differently. Any religion
or way of life that helps one seek a holiness and a love for their fellow
is equally loved by God. For Jews, we have our way, and within our way,
we have many ways. All are beloved of God. No one way is better than the
next. We do NOT believe we have the "true" religion. What we do believe
is that we need to derive "mussar," ethical teachings, from our Torah, so
that we can treat all of our fellows with love. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan
said, "The past should have a vote, not a veto."
Even some, who unfortunately misinterpret the d'var discussed this week
to mean "love your fellow Jew," miss this narrow interpretation as well.
The Talmud tells of a horrible tragedy that befell our people during this
period of time we now celebrate during the
counting of the omer. This is the seven-week period between Pesach and
Shavuot, when we were given the Torah on Mt. Sinai. About 1,900 years
ago, Rabbi Akiva witnessed the sudden death of 24,000 of his students.
The Talmud explains that they were punished because they disobeyed the
mitzvah of "ve'ahavta l'rayehcha kamocha" and treated each other harshly,
snubbed each other, did loshan ha ra about each other, and belittled each
other's rabbis and teachings, each thinking they knew the right and only
answer. God struck them dead rather than let them go out and become
rabbis, judges, and teachers of our people. Those who think this verse
means to just "love your fellow Jew" are mistaken, but those who think it
means to "love only your fellow Jew who is a member of your own sect or
shul" are also sadly mistaken.
Every person is in the image of God, b'tzelem Elohem. This is true of
anyone of any creed. All of us need to understand this as we are now securely
into the third millennium of the Gregorian calendar. Everyone
needs, as Rabbi Judith Hauptman has written, "our active monitoring of
his or her welfare and protection from discrimination and exploitation."
We must be a light for the other nations.
The verse we studied today ends with "I am God." Rabbi Hillel astounded
his students one day, as related in Talmud Sukah 53A , when
he said, "When I am here, then everyone is here." Rabbi Hillel was an
extremely humble and sensitive man. The statement sounds so arrogant.
Hillel then taught that the "I" in his statement was the "I" in our
verse. He said the Torah was teaching that love for our fellow man was to
be predicated on our love for God and knowing God. If our love for our
fellow human is founded on our pure love for God, and not politics,
ulterior motives, or religious rivalries, our joy in helping and loving
others will be pure ecstatic spirituality. We will realize that, quoting
author Ken Kesey, "either we are on the bus, or we are off the bus."
Shabbat Shalom,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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