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God doesn't want to be stuck in Heaven. He wants to be let into our hearts. He wants to be there when our actions do tikkun olam. In the heavens God created the 'lights' of the sun, the moon, the stars. But in our actions, of spiritual awakened, spiritually renewed, people, God dwells in our hearts and in our actions of chesed. We then light the world by unhusking the covered sparks of Divine light, broken during creation when God contracted, to make room for us. That is what Tikkun Olam is, as defined in Kabbalah.
We can only know that whatever happens has happened, that God is just, and that He does not desire suffering. Gamzu l'tovah we are taught. All things are for the good. Suffering becomes worse when we suffer asking 'why?'
If prayer is us talking to God, and to our inner selves, then meditation is learning to listen to that ''still small voice,'' as Isaiah describes it, of God Who is always talking to us. This is why the rabbis in Talmud Bavli Tractate Chullin 89a teach : "Which craft should man pursue in this world? He should strive to emulate a mute to avoid evil talk and press his lips together like two millstones which grind against one another." We need to learn to quiet ourselves. This takes practice, and chapter 9 of (001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal - Rabbi Arthur Segal will help us learn this.
Chapter Nine: Learning to Meditate - Ha Amokat Ha Daat
Explaining Prophet, Nevi, Means Open
Explaining Mitzraim , Egypt
When We Are Free Of Ego, Resentment, Selfishness, We Are Open To Hear God.
Instructions On How To Meditate
In the last chapter you learned how to pray and how to set aside time every day for prayers. You learned self-judging prayers to help you improve yourself and grow spiritually. You learned blessings to thank God for all of His gifts. You studied prayers of petition asking God to grant good health and the wisdom to do His will, to love and be of service to others. You also learned that it is necessary to bless God throughout the day for His bountiful gifts, and to develop an attitude of gratitude. Your prayers are the start of your personal relationship with God as your trusted Supreme Parent.
Equally important as prayer is meditation. If prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to God.
Yankele was watching his father, a rabbi, write one of his Shabbat speeches.
"How do you know what to say, Daddy?" Yankele asked.
"Why, son, God tells me," said the Rabbi.
"Oh, then why do you keep crossing things out?"
God is always talking to us. He is always giving us Good Orderly Direction. Indeed, the Torah and wisdom in the Talmud and our other sacred texts are this Good Orderly Direction put to writing.
So few of us listen, though. We go about our business living a life without God, or worse, thinking that we are doing God's will when we are doing the opposite, and we don't even realize it.
A life of peace, joy and bliss is the natural state that God created for us. We are the ones who have undermined the natural state. Using a biblical analogy, it was human character defects that got us tossed out of the Garden of Eden, a perfect paradise. It is the ego careening out of control that sabotages our natural state of peace, joy and bliss. Left to its own devices, the ego is a powerful force driving us to prove that we are right—an action that time and time again creates stress and conflict.
What is the natural state of the mind? For most people, it is to let the mind wander, always darting from one thought to the next. The mind oscillates between thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future, bringing on stress caused by regrets about the past or anxiety about the future. When you stand with one foot on tomorrow's worries and the other on yesterday's regrets, you are straddling today and wasting a precious gift. You want to stand with both feet firmly planted in today.
We are all born in a blissful state. Most of us lose this bliss as we grow due to various external factors that condition the mind and disrupt our true nature. A state of bliss is everybody's true nature and it is our birthright to enjoy each and every moment to its fullest. We possess an unconscious yearning to connect with the source of bliss that is the Divine Spark in each of us. Layers of mental patterns and emotional disturbances act as barriers when we try to reach this ocean of bliss and peace.
Meditation is the phase of your Jewish Spiritual Renewal in which you will remove the barriers. Psychiatrists and neurologists have proven that our natural state is to be happy. Our selfish will puts us in conflict with the natural state in which we were created. Meditation is the means to block out instructions from the ego and the selfish will in order to hear Guidance.
When you are extracted from your natural state, the culprit is your selfish will. Do not be fooled by anyone who tells you that society or modern day life is at fault. This is nothing but an excuse meant to absolve you of life's responsibilities. While it may be true that the modern world offers many more distractions from the Divine Spark than in older times, you possess the same power to overcome them as somebody who lived thousands of years ago. The cause is, always has been and always will be the same, a life that is not spiritually centered.
We often ignore the signs our bodies send us, suppressing our basic need for rest and daily Spiritual Renewal. We ignore Shabbat, God's wonderful gift to us. We do not sleep enough. We do not take time to breathe correctly. We overwork and overeat. We teach our bodies to forget their natural state of harmony and blissfulness, and this keeps us in a state of stress. Research has shown a correlation between obesity and under-sleeping. When the body does not get its required rest it produces "tiredness chemicals" that the body confuses with "hunger chemicals." In an overly tired state, you might eat something to energize yourself, but food is not a substitute for the sort of energy that you get from proper rest. So when your body does not respond to the food, it thinks that it needs more food, putting you in a vicious circle that can lead to obesity and related diseases like diabetes and coronary heart illnesses. This is not what God wants for you!
The Zohar (The Book of Radiance of the Kabbalah) teaches that the source of all of our stress is resistance. Resistance is judgment, while relaxation is acceptance and knowing God's unconditional love. The sages teach that, "Love and bliss increase where judgment and resistance decrease."
Baruch ha Shem we will continue with the second third of chapter 9 of (001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal - Rabbi Arthur Segal or http://www.shop.jewishspiritualrenewal.net/product.sc;jsessionid=5C09106E770F711A24A135C59A7E346E.qscstrfrnt03?productId=1&categoryId=1 next week. Below is a d'var Torah for Shabbat May 22, 2010, and a d'var as well for Shavuot.
Shalom uvracha:
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Parasha Naso: Numbers 4:21-7:89
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"Live Long and Prosper"
Parasha Naso is the longest in all of the Five Books of Moses, our Chumash. This is due to what at first glance looks like redundant repetition (pardon my redundancy!) of the offerings made by the heads of the tribes to the priests. Each brings the same thing of the same quality in the same quantity, and does so in the same manner…or so it appears. I'll explain later.
Before the tribal leaders bring their offerings, Moses teaches Aaron and his sons how to bless the children of Israel. We have all heard these priestly blessings, which are found in Numbers 6:24 through 6:26. Let's have a look now at the words and their meanings.
"May God bless you and safeguard you."
This is the first of the three priestly beracoth. What does it mean to wish God's blessings upon someone? By doing so we acknowledge that all blessings come from the Almighty. Only God can assure success, abundance and good health. We insert this very prayer into our Shemoneh Esrei every day. By praying that God will bless someone and keep that person is an acceptance of the Oneness and greatness of God.
This first of the three blessings pertains to material prosperity. We are asking God to keep His promise. The promise made in Deuteronomy 28:1-14 is a promise of successful crops and businesses, healthy flocks, and increased possessions. The Mishna teaches in Pirkei Avot 3:15 that where there is no flour, there is no Torah. The more prosperous we are, the more time we can spend studying Torah and sharing our wealth with others.
After the priest asks God to bless us, he then asks God to safeguard us. Why? Material possessions bring with them the risk of robbery, jealousy, and possibly bodily harm. We are being taught here that physical gifts are important, but they are not the be all end all of our existence. Our survival, of course, depends upon our physical needs being met, but we need much more.
We are further taught in the Midrash that the best way to garner continued blessings for our wealth is to use it for mitzvoth. The sages teach that this is the best way to thank God for His generosity and ensure continued blessings.
Bringing it home to modern day life, we can interpret this blessing to mean that God wants you to be prosperous. He wants you to be wealthy! Not to impress your friends; not because "he who dies with the most toys wins." God wants you to be rich so that you have the means and the time to do His work.
Surely you've heard some version of the adage: "Nobody ever asked a poor man for a job." There is a good reason for this; it requires wealth to be in a position to employ others, enabling them to sustain themselves and prosper so that they are better able to do His work.
"May God illuminate His countenance for you and be gracious to you."
In the book of Proverbs (6:23) this second blessing is written, "The commandments are a lamp and the Torah is a light." We are blessed to be able to comprehend the wisdom of the Torah and of God's gift of creation.
Having already been given wishes for prosperity, we are now able to go beyond the elementary requirements of survival, says Rabbi Sforno of sixteenth-century Rome. The second blessing is a spiritual one based on inspiration and hope from the knowledge of the Torah.
The word "countenance" literally means "face" in Hebrew. God is incorporeal, and we are taught that only Moses saw God face to face. We are being blessed to have the ability to understand God's purpose for us in His universe. This is similar, according to Rabbi Raphael Hirsch, to having the ability to read one's attitudes by reading facial expressions. When we understand God we will appreciate His gifts and truly know what to do with them. This is the "light" of the Torah. The study of Torah helps us learn of Gods "face."
The concept of being in God's grace is a fascinating one. There are those who believe that we Jews lost divine favor circa 35 C.E. The Midrash Sifre states that this means we wish for God to let our fellows look upon us with grace. It is written that a "person can have a host of personal attributes, but unless his fellows appreciate and understand him, his relationship with them will not be positive." The quality of being liked by others is called grace.
The Or ha Chaim (Rabbi Chaim ben Attar of eighteenth-century Italy) says that this is a prayer asking for other nations to like and understand us. The Rambam says that this means Israel, or we as individuals, should find favor in God's eyes.
"May God lift his face to you and establish peace for you."
This third blessing is a wish for God's compassion, forgiveness and the granting of shalom. Rashi says that the blessing asks God to suppress his anger against us even if we have sinned. We cannot look at another while feeling anger toward them. We pray that God will always look directly at us and not turn his back toward us.
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Rosh Hashanah 17B, the proselytess Bloria asks how God can show mercy to somebody undeserving. The Kohan Yose answers that God mercifully forgives sins committed against Him. He refuses to show favor to those who sin against their fellow man unless they first placate and obtain forgiveness from the victim.
This is a major point where Judaism and Christianity part company. Judaism believes that we are born into God's grace and can maintain this grace only through repentance to God and to those that we have hurt. Our grace has to be continually earned.
The Midrash teaches that the gates for our repentance, our Jewish Spiritual Renewal, are always open. Christianity says we are born into a state of sin, and only accepting Jesus puts us into a state of grace, which we keep regardless of our actions as long as we still believe.
The last phrase of wishing us peace is how the blessing is sealed. Without peace, internally and externally, we cannot enjoy God's bounty. In the very last words of the entire Talmud (Bavli Tractate Uktin 3:12), Rabbi Shimon ben Chalefta said, "God could find no container that would hold Israel's blessings as well as peace." He quoted Psalm 29:11 in which we end our Blessing after the Meal: "God will give might to his people. God will bless his people with peace."
The Or ha Chaim wrote that peace is not just harmony among people. Peace is the "balance between the needs of the body and the needs of the soul." Universally, it is the balance between the infinite Holy elements and the earthbound human, mundane elements.
In traditional synagogues you will not hear the rabbi utter these words routinely. They were meant for Aaron and his priestly sect. The Temple was destroyed. The Kohan cult no longer existed and these blessings, our sages taught, cannot be pronounced until the Temple's restoration. Once a year on the High Holy Days at a "duchining" ceremony one can witness today, in some traditional synagogues, the Levites washing the hands of the Kohans, and the Kohans giving the congregation this blessing. The Kohans hold their hands up with their fourth and fifth fingers together, their second and third fingers together, and a wide split between the third and fourth fingers and the second finger and the thumb. They then put their thumbs close together and raise their hands high while reciting these priestly blessings. This ceremony is done during the Mussaf section of the holiday service.
In Israel, many traditional synagogues now do this in their everyday morning prayer service. Some rabbis have posited that this is allowed because they are living in Israel, and this will hasten the rebuilding of the Temple. In liberal synagogues the rabbi will bless his congregation each Shabbat and on holidays. I propose something more radical:
On Shavuot, many of us studied the Book of Ruth. In Chapter 2, Verse 4 Boaz (Ruth's future second husband) says to his workers, "The Lord be with you." They answered him, "The Lord bless thee." Each of us can bestow on another these priestly blessings today. After all, do we not read in the Torah that we are to be a "nation of priests?" I challenge myself, and you, to not only bless each other, but to work toward the fulfillment of these blessings.
We cannot only pray for God to help us prosper and to sustain us, but we can work actively as a partner with God in this effort. We can help our friends with their business endeavors. We can feed the hungry. We can visit the sick. We can do acts of ahavath chesed (loving kindness).
We can pray that God safeguard us, but we must also work toward protecting each other. We can let go of coveting practices and petty jealousies. We can revel in the success of others.
I have found that there are two philosophies with regard to looking at the success of others. Some of us think there is a limited amount of "pie" in this world. If you have a slice, some think of it as a slice that they cannot have. Others think the opposite. They think there is an infinite amount of pie in this world. If you have a piece; that's great. There's enough pie to go around for everyone.
The first way of thinking actually denies God. Those who are petty and jealous, who feel threatened by someone else's achievements, do not believe in the Oneness and Infinity of God. If you truly believe in God, then you know that there is unlimited pie. If we all knew that, we would always be safeguarded, as there would be no jealousy or theft.
We can pray to God for spirituality and grace, but we must also climb the rungs of our own spiritual ladders and be gracious to our fellows. We can bestow our love and friendship on all people.
We need to remember that the Hebrew words for "speaking" and for "bumble bee" are similar; D'var and Devarah. Our words can be sweet as honey or as mean as the bee's sting. Aim for the honey.
How can we even be so bold as to ask God for His grace if we cannot civilly extend it to one another? God may forgive us for our sins toward Him, but He does not forgive us for our sins toward others unless we make a sincere apology to the injured party.
We can help extend grace to one another by teaching mussar (ethical behavior), which is found repeatedly in our great texts. Our lay leaders can try to behave graciously not only to each other, but to all of their constituent-congregants. We can treat our rabbis, cantors, and our teachers with the respect that they deserve.
We are living in strange times where negative behaviors seem to be the norm as they filter into our homes through television shows and Web sites. Our temples and synagogues need to be places where we can teach proper person-to-person behaviors. We need to be a counterbalance to the entitlement, me only, limited pie philosophies that pervade American thought - if we go so far as to call it thought.
Our sages taught long ago in the Mishna Pirkei Avot that a rich man is one who is happy with what he has (4:01). We can pray to God to look directly at us, forgive us and give us peace, but we must also do the same for each other. We need to be honest with one another. We need to talk to each other and not at each other. We need to begin to understand each other and really communicate.
I wrote of I-Thou and I-It relationships a few parashot ago. We relate to one another too often as "it" and not enough as "Thou." We are taught that it is a sin to pray to God for something that we do not need or that we will squander. Our communal prayers are continually filled with cries for shalom. When we are sinful to one another, a barrier is created not only between people, but also between God and people. There is a disruption in the balance of the universe between the Infinite Holy God and human, mundane elements. The rungs on the spiritual ladder that we are to climb to elevate ourselves from the mundane to the Holy get broken. If we truly believed in God, we would do our best to grant our fellows true peace and not machlokot (strife and petty arguments).
As already mentioned, parasha Naso is the longest Torah portion because of the repetition of the tribal leaders' gifts. At a first read it looks as though the leaders, each one coming on a different day, are bringing the exact same offerings. The Midrash explains that even though the twelve offerings were identical, each alluded to the special mission of each tribe so that each was unique (Mishna Bamidbar Rabba 13:13).
Today we enter our synagogues as unique individuals even though we all pay the same dues.
Each of us is worthy.
Each of us is important.
Each of us is needed.
We are all needed in the brew that makes up a congregation's life.
We are all each other's "cup of tea."
Each of us brings a unique flavor to the mix.
Each of us is beloved by God. It would be nice if each of us were beloved by each other.
As Numbers 7:01 to 7:89 shows, we are to bring into a Temple, not distract from it. In order to really understand this we need to be familiar with God's rules of the spiritual universe. Rabbi Chaim of Volozshin in his book Nefesh ha Chaim…Soul of Life explains, "God has a desire to give man all of the blessings in the world - to cause the Divine abundance to rain down on man." In order for this to occur, Rabbi Ari Kahn teaches, man must create a world that is deserving of such blessing.
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Metziah 30B, Rabbi Yochanan taught, "Jerusalem was destroyed because the people judged with Torah law...They judged according to the law of the Torah and never went beyond the letter of the Law."
People then were no different than they are now. Everyone then stood up firmly for his "rights" to the letter of the Torah law. There was no real sense of community. People used one another for their own personal gain. They were not a people or a congregation. They were individuals and cliques.
The Talmud teaches that God treated them in an identical manner. He judged them according to the letter of the law, without mercy. Jerusalem fell, and our 2,000-year Diaspora began. Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassor pointed out that the priestly blessings, while told to all of Israel, use the word "you" in the singular. He says that this should teach us that while we are all individuals, the greatest blessing is unity and peace. Rabbi Leib writes that we need to respect each other's uniqueness while remembering the common bonds that bring about unity. In Kabalistic terms the Hebrew word Ahavah (love) has the same numerical value (13) as the Hebrew word Echad (one).
If you were asked what is your greatest gift in life, how would you answer? Would you say your health, your spouse, your children, or your beach house on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina?
Our greatest blessing, as we are reminded on Shavuot, is Torah. Without the understanding we get from Torah, our material goods and social relationships are worthless. If we do not know how to thank God for our physical blessings, how do we really appreciate them? We all know of those who are not happy with what they have, who continually buy new cars, new houses, new toys, yet are never satisfied. We also know of those who are never happy with their families and abandon them through divorce, only to start new families, but find no happiness there either.
Without the illumination we get from Torah we will not know how to appreciate or treat our spouses, children or friends, or know how to be thankful for our material goods or health. Modern Jews have shunned blind ritual in order to do Tikun Olam repair of the world. There has been a casting off the God-to-man mitzvoth in order to concentrate on the man-to-man laws. It is said that Modern Jews will not wait for Jerusalem to have its Third Temple and have declared that synagogues are the present temples. It has been posited that the tribal distinctions of Levite and Kohan do not apply today as there is no priestly cult, and that there will be no preparation for a Temple that may never come in the future.
If this is all part of Modern Jewish doctrine, then we have an even greater obligation to obey the man-to-man laws. We have an obligation to act priestly and holy as individuals. We have a greater obligation to study Torah and mussar (ethics) and walk humbly in God's path. We need to "engross ourselves in the words of Torah" and taste its sweetness. For Torah truly "is our life, and the length of our days."
"May God bless you and keep you. May God show His face to you and be gracious to you. May God lift His face to you and grant you Shalom." Or as the Star Trek Vulcans - Spock, T'Pol and Tuvack - say as they raise one hand in the Kohan manner, "Live long and prosper."
Shabbat Shalom:
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Shavuot
Selected
Exodus 19:01-20:23
Numbers 28:26-31
Deuteronomy 14:22-16:17
Ezekiel 1:1-28,3:12
Habbakkuk 2:20-3:19
Book Of Ruth
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"Kosher X-Files with Jewish Men in Black"
"Ezekiel saw da wheel" is how the African American spiritual begins. Moses saw the Burning Bush. "The Children of Israel saw Mt. Sinai smoke and shudder amidst thunder and lightning and powerful shofar blasts." (Deut. 19:16-18). The themes of these portions of the TaNaK (Holy Scriptures), which make up Shavuot's Torah and Haftarah readings, deal with revelation and theophany. Theophany is the appearance of God to man. Shavuot is the holiday that celebrates God's revealing the Torah to Moses on
Ezekiel was a Kohan priest in
While Moses' experiences have been studied openly and publicly in-depth, Ezekiel's have not received much study. Ezekiel's vision is of the Divine Throne and of the Holy Chariot. In Hebrew this is Ma'ateh Merkabah (the work of the chariot). Its study was reserved for men of "the highest degree of mental and moral perfection" according to Rabbi J. Hertz.
The Talmud Bavli, in Tractate Chagigah 14B, tells of what happened when Rabbi Elazer ben Arach expounded upon this text. A fire descended from heaven and singed all of the trees near him. Traditionally the sages did not permit public study of this chapter. Only the most highly qualified people could study it individually.
Five years had passed since Ezekiel was taken into custody. While sitting by the river's edge he saw in the sky a wheel within a wheel. The clouds opened, and the wheel had a great brightness around it. It had the color of electrum. The Hebrew word for this is "chashmal," which denotes a bright metal-like polished bronze. Four creatures came out of this bright light. They each had four faces, four wings, and jointless legs and feet like calves. The four faces were that of a man, an eagle, a bull, and lion. Their bodies were humanoid. They could move in any direction without turning. They appeared like burning coals with lightning coming from them. They traveled in wheels within wheels. They had many eyes. When they moved, their wings made a terrible noise like the roar of the ocean. When the creature spoke to Ezekiel, he was certain it was God. He felt himself being lifted up and carried away. This was Ezekiel's theophany.
What sort of creature has four faces and changes direction without turning its body? Dr. Jo Milgrom, an expert in Near East mythology and art, writes that these faces are apparent on the sphinx in
While Ezekiel was having his vision, the keruvim were still in the
Do the four faces represent Zodiac signs? Does the human face represent Gemini? We could say easily that the lion is Leo and the bull is Taurus. Is the eagle a taloned higher version of the earthly Scorpio? The sign of Gemini in Hebrew is called "teumim," meaning twins. This is the sign under which Torah was given. Shavuot happened on the sixth of the month of Sivan. It is fitting that Torah was given in this month, the sages teach, because Torah helps humankind achieve full human potential. We are to be raised above the level of animals represented by most other constellations.
Rabbi M. Glazerson writes, "When the Jewish people camped at the foot of Sinai in preparation to receive the Torah, they achieved a harmony and unity which was unparalleled before or since." The scholar known as the Or Ha Chaim, Rabbi Chaim ben Attar of eighteenth-century
The Midrash teaches that all Jews on this day saw the Divine Chariot appear at Sinai. Rabbi Glazerson wrote that the symbol of the Twins is an expression of oneness. Jews were all different people that day at Sinai, each physically separate, but joined in a spiritual kinship that made them resemble each other to the point that they were identical to one another.
Ezekiel is not the only person in our Jewish literature to report seeing odd creatures or heavenly bodies descend to earth. Elisha saw Elijah get taken away to the heavens in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11). Zechariah (Zech. 5:1-2) saw a "flying roll" in the shape of what today we would call a rocket. Isaiah (27:01) tells us of three large creatures called Leviathan, Nehash and Bariah. Job (40:15-24) tells us about the Behemoth. We all know of the man-angels (cherubim) that appeared to Abraham and
The Pseudapocrypha's Book of 3, Baruch 6:1-13 tells us of a live sphinx and 2 Enoch's Chapter 6 is replete with tales of giant animals and other hybrids. The Septuagint translation of the TaNaK into Greek speaks of dragons in the book of Daniel.
The Talmudic rabbis discuss two giant birds called Ziz and Bar-Yohani. They further tell tales of seeing giant sea-dragons, giant buffalo, and unicorns in their travels. The sages also speak of a special hybrid called a Koy or Kewi, as well as Capricorns and centaurs. The latter two appear on walls of ancient synagogues. The rabbis also tell us of a siren's heavenly voice whispering to them to help them reach halachic decisions involving Jewish law.
Ezekiel and Moses were not the only biblical figures to have theophanies. We read of many of them in Jeremiah, Zechariah, Daniel, Job, Jonah, and throughout the Chumash with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. All were talking to and hearing God. Even Cain, before and after he killed Abel, had a theophany.
Can any of us today in this post-biblical era receive a theophany? We are told that God speaks to each of us in our hearts. Certainly Ruth had this type of revelation. Theophanies do not have to be theatrical. John's vision in his book of Revelations is another example of an almost Broadway-like produced theophany, which if read, parallels Ezekiel's.
Ruth's theophany is much more subtle and even more wondrous in ways than Moses', Ezekiel's and those experienced by others. God picked Moses, Abraham and the prophets, but Ruth arrived to love God in a different manner.
Ruth was a Moabite princess who married a Jew (Machlon) who had come to
Judaism is not a racial trait. In a sense we were all converts at Sinai, and we must remind ourselves every day, and especially at Shavuot, to re-experience the revelation. The Talmud teaches that Ruth's name gematrially has a numerical value of 606. Since all humans have an obligation to observe the seven Noahide laws, Ruth as a Moabite was responsible for them. Add these seven laws to her name's numerical value and one arrives at 613, the number of mitzvoth in the entire Torah.
The Vilna Gaon says that Ruth sought out Torah to complete what she was missing spiritually. Ruth's conversion to the faith of her mother-in-law seems simplistic enough in the book of Ruth (1:16-17). Ruth pledges, after being rebuked by Naomi three times, to go where she goes, lodge where she lodges, adopt her people and her God, and be buried where Naomi is buried. She further swears that God should punish her if anything but death separates Ruth from Naomi. However, the Talmud Bavli, in Tractate Yevomot 47B, extracts its many complex laws of conversion from these two simple verses in the Book of Ruth.
"How does love for one's mother-in-law make a person good Jew?" the sages ask in the Talmud. The rabbis, in Tractate Ketuboth 111B, posit that one cannot love another without knowing details about the person. Therefore one cannot love God, which is one of the greatest of all mitzvoth, if one has not studied God in what we call conversion classes. However, the rabbis posit that if one knows a Torah scholar or a righteous individual and loves that person, one therefore can feel attached to God as well. So Ruth cleaved herself to Naomi, who was already attached to God. Since pure people like Naomi were rare by the time of the Talmud's writing, the sages developed many rules for conversion to Judaism. Cleaving to another Jew was no longer sufficient, they decided.
From reading the last few verses in the Book of Ruth we know that Ruth was to become the grandmother of King David through marriage to her kinsman Boaz. But let us not forget that Ruth's ancestor was
Now the sages teach that while Abraham may have "discovered God," it was the Jewish women, our matriarchs who had the binah (wisdom) to translate God's ideals into everyday living. Since our matriarchal line comes from
This bit of genealogy steals from the beauty that we derive from the Book of Ruth. That beauty is that anyone can be come a Jew regardless of their bloodline. Anyone can reach his or her fullest potential. We do not need a genealogical litmus test to determine if we, our children, or our grandchildren will do well in this world. Judaism is not based on racial lines. It is a way of living. It is open to all who wish to follow it sincerely.
Ruth is the epitome of a good Jewish convert not because she cleaved to Naomi to learn Torah, but because she already acted within the essence and framework of Judaism. Her grandson, King David, wrote in Psalm 89:3, "Kindness builds the world." Ruth's acts of kindness to Naomi and the sacrifice of her wealthy princess way of life in
When Naomi first tells her two widowed daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah to go back to
In traditional congregations the Akadamus poem is read before the Shavuot Torah reading. Every line ends with the syllable "ta," which is written with the last and the first letters of the Aleph-Bait. This alludes to the endlessness of the Torah and the Infinity and Oneness of God.
The Hebrew word for truth, emet, is written with the first (aleph), middle (mem), and last (tav) letters of the Hebrew alphabet. When we reach the final letter tav in the order of the letters, we immediately start to dwell on the first letter aleph. Part of this prayer is as follows:
If all the heavens were parchment,
if all the trees of the forest were pens,
if all the waters of the sea were ink,
and if every creature was a scribe,
they would not suffice to expound the greatness of The Creator,
and the reflection of His Majesty in Heaven and on Earth,
effortlessly created with the breath of the letter Heh.
This poem was written by Rabbi Meir ben Yitchak of eleventh-century
Within this prayer we return to Ezekiel's vision of strange beings. Rabbi Meir's Akadamus tells about the Talmudic and Midrashic Leviathan and Behemoth. He writes how they will do battle with each other (the first is a sea monster, and the second is a land monster). Then, when the Messiah comes, God will clothe the righteous with the skin of the Leviathan and make tents for shelter from it as well. From both the Behemoth and the Leviathan, God will prepare a big banquet for the righteous, who will eat "amid great joy and merriment." Perhaps Rabbi Meir had a small theophany as well.
Do we need to call on the Jewish "Men in Black" to help us with our own revelations? Who would play the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith roles? Perhaps when we read the these Torah and Haftarah portions in our temples and synagogues we can try really hard to talk with God and see if God answers. Perhaps we can even try to achieve this at home, or at the beach, or in a park or by our own river. Mediation and prayer, which I do thrice daily, and which I teach, has always been a part of Judaism, and during the Talmudic age, there were hundreds of schools in
Crypto-Jews, who had to hide their Judaism under penalty of death, pretended to play card games on Shabbat while secretly discussing Torah. These card games were called barajas, from the Hebrew word for blessings, Barachas. One never really knows when God will speak.
"The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, and to all who call upon Him in truth."
"Where is God? Wherever you let him in."
"To truly love God, one must first love people. If anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow humans, you will know that he is lying."
Worship should not be like going to the gas station where we get tanked up spiritually for the week. It is an ongoing process of spiritual growth.
I would like to end this segment with a psalm by one of my favorite Jewish poets, Bob Dylan. It is entitled, Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.
Where do you find the hope that yer seekin'?
You can either go to the church of your choice,
or you can go to the
You'll find God in the church of your choice.
You'll find Woody Guthrie in the
And although it's my opinion. I may be right or wrong.
You'll find them both in the
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