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Jewish Spiritual Renewal:Shabbat 5/1/09:Torah,TaNaK, Talmud, Ethics+Spirituality
Shabbat Shalom my beloved Talmidim v' Chaverim:
We received some wonderful feedback about Dr. Chaikin's d'var that I sent mid week. Much better reviews than anything I have written. Maybe this will encourage you, especially our Rabbinic students, our newly ordained Rabbis, and our Rabbis who have been around, to send in a d'var or two. And certainly, for those others taking this class, please send a short essay on anything we discuss, or maybe did not discuss.
So today is the 15th day of the Omer and this class is for the Shabbat a week from now.
As is our tradition we try to grow spiritually during the 7 weeks of the Omer between Pesach and Shavuot, and we do so, by one means, by studying the Tractate of Talmud called Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers. A link for the whole book is :
This Shabbat we are studying Chapter 2.
Some Talmud: Bavli Ethics of the Fathers 2:1: Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you cannot know the rewards of the mitzvoth. [Rabbi Judah HaNasi]
Now, on face value, this bit of advice is simple. We are not to assign value to any mitzvah and to do them all equally. But when we think about this for a few moments, we can see the horns of a dilemma we find ourselves.
Of course mitzvoth have different rankings in the human eye. Is murder not a greater sin than wearing clothes made with two types of materials? The mishna itself uses terms to categorize great and small commandments, chamurah and kaloh .
By looking at the punishments for disobeying a commandment, we also can see that different mitzvoth have more value on a human scale than others. While the Talmud's jurisprudence system makes it almost impossible for a human court to carry out these sentences, we have punishments ranging from death, to excommunication, to lashes, to imprisonment, to fines.
Judah ha Nasi in the Talmud is teaching us that spiritually, all mitzvoth share a singularity.
Some more Talmud Bavli Tractate Sukkah 25a: `One who is involved with one mitzvah need not involve himself with another mitzvah.'' (Osek b'Mitzvah Patur Min haMitzvah.) If I am doing Bikur Cholem, visiting the sick, I can miss the Ma'ariv minyon. Now this bit of Talmudic Judaic law falls short on many of those who do ritual for the sake of ritual. When my wife was in the hospital with cancer, one of my orthodox rebbes would not visit her, because the travel time plus the visiting time, would keep him from prayer. This is not Judaism. We can pray alone. Chesed trumps ritual.
The above Talmudic rule applies to any two mitzvoth. There is no codicil about one mitzvah being greater than another. Now common sense tells us, that if I am doing the Mitzvah of leading a Passover seder and my neighbor has fallen into a well, I should stop the seder and save the person.
So when Ha Nasi says we do not know the rewards of any mitzvah, he is talking about spirituality and that all mitzvoth can have this singularity.
So how can Ha Nasi say all mitzvah become equal when in other places we see they are not, as well as common sense tells us they are not.
So what is a mitzvah? We see many Jews, especially some untrained rabbis, teach that it means good deeds. While some mitzvoth are good deeds mitzvah means commandment. And God can do quite well by Himself if we eat a cheeseburger, or close our Temple on Shabbat and play golf. Man cannot do anything to subtract from the infinite.
But can we? Well there are plenty of folks readying this right now saying ''darn tootin' ,pass me some pork bbq and my mistress as well.''
The root of mitzvah is the word for connection.
Our commandments are given to us ''for us''. However by doing them, we get a spiritual connection to God. By not doing any of them, small or large, we find ourselves eventually disconnected spiritually from God. When we are disconnected spiritually from God, we are connected with our egos, our self. We live in a state of delusion where our acts, sometimes still good, are all self seeking. We may be the president of a Temple, and perhaps do some good along the way, but our motives are not driven by mitzvoth, but by ego. Eventually our ego, has us step on the egos of others, and we become disconnected from other human beings as well.
You can test yourself if you are doing good deeds for ego or for Mitzvoth sake? Would you still do them if your name was not in the shul bulletin? Would you give a d'var Torah or lead an adult education class using a nom de plume with a paper bag over your head? Do you give to charity in cash anonymously?
Some TaNaK: ``God, His way is perfect, the word of God is refined,'' Ps. 18:30. The mitzvoth were given to refine us. What does God care if we rest on Sabbath? Does God really care if we eat lobster?
So all of the mitzvoth, in one way or another, bring us closer to the refinement of a Homo Spiritus and not just a Homo Sapien. All of them help bind us to God, connect us spiritually to God, and to one another.
Hence we never truly can know the rewards of doing any mitzvoth because defining a relationship with the infinite, as I write below in the D'var on Parasha Kedoshim, belittles the infinite to the finite.
Enjoy studying the rest of Chapter Two of Pirkei Avot.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
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 Click to Order | A SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL COMPENDIUM TO THE TORAH AND TALMUD Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us. This companion to The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew brings the Torah alive with daily relevance to the Modern Jew. All of the Torah can be summed up in one word: Chesed. It means kindness. The Talmud teaches that the Torah is about loving our fellow man and that we are to go and study. The rest is commentary. This compendium clarifies the commentary and allows one to study Torah and Talmud to learn the Judaic ideals of love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy and peace. A must read for all Jews and deserves a place in every Jewish home. Price: $24.99 494 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge |
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(001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal
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In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.
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(002) A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud
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A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us.
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(003) Tzadakkah Bundle
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The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal and A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud. Purchase both books as a set, and I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to the tzadakkah of your choice. -- Rabbi Segal
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