Drash Shavuot 5766

There are four things which are making writing this Drash very, very difficult this week.

The first was a finally reading the news and finding out about the situation with Mordechai Gafni. The second is Shavuot. The third is that due to a conflict between the Reform and the traditional calendar I have to think about two different Torah portions between Shlomo’s Drash and what goes on at my current Reform synagogue for the next couple of weeks.

The fourth was a social experiment in how many men are desperate to learn a fool-proof method for picking up women. And while I was very skeptical of the web-based sale of 375 sets of DVD’s recording a seminar which was supposed to make you into Casanova, it was interesting to watch the phenomenon of the internet breaking loose into a week-long panic as men worldwide tried to get their hands on those DVD’s. It was interesting to watch competitors slam the product even when they were featured in that product. It was interesting to watch the utter stunned silence and then slander from his competitors on the net when everyone found out that they were all part of a major social experiment taken on by a man going by the nickname Style, a Rolling Stone reporter turned pickup artist and author, who was using all this to research his new book. All these would-be pickup artists had just been seduced by the man they wanted to call master.

As far as the Gafni situation is concerned, while he was once my teacher, and indeed the inspiration for Shlomo’s Drash, I had my problems with him in terms of academic integrity far before this current incident. Those earlier issues led me to go elsewhere for knowledge. I also respect that others might still have learned something from him, many of whom I call friend. I’ve also learned in the time I was in the Renewal movement, to never knock a teacher for any perceived imperfection no matter how valid, since it only gets you hated by everyone else. Given the number of loyal Gafni students on this list, I’ve kept rather quiet about my own concerns.

Yet I am also one of his former students. In all the lashon hara I heard blogging the internet, much of it from people using this as an excuse to go after other targets such as Arthur Waskow, the one opinion I have not heard so far is how formerly loyal students of Gafni feel right now -- if it’s anything like me, pretty crappy.

As it is Shavuot, and the celebration of the Ten Commandments we need to remember one of those commandments

Exodus 20:12. Honor your father and your mother; that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.

And in relation to that quote another interesting quote from Brachot 19b

R.Samuel b. Nahmani said in R. Jonathan's name: He who teaches the child of his neighbor the Torah, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he had begotten him, as it says, Now, these are the generations of Aaron and Moses;(Num 3:1) whilst further on (v. 2,3) it is written, These are the names of the sons of Aaron: thus teaching thee that Aaron begot and Moses taught them; hence they are called by his name.

In many ways, the teacher is the parent, with the same responsibilities of the parent and child relationship in the student and teacher relationship. We honor our teachers the same way we honor our parents. We trust our teachers the same way we trust our parents to steer us away from harm. I’ve never had to be in the situation where I have been ashamed of my parent’s behavior, where they did something that would harm either my sister or me. Like most children I’ve had my moments of exasperation with them, but never have I felt betrayed by them -- that the life they led was all a lie. So even for a teacher I have moved on from, it is difficult to deal with all the conflicting emotions in me about what to feel.

If we keep this idea of the parent child relationship, we can see another problem inherent in the laws of Leviticus 18 -- incest. Sex with a student is equivalent with incest, and there is no idea of consent with incest. Whether the women involved were involved consensually or not, they are victims of a kind of incest. A person of power used that power to have sex with a person of lower power. And those of us who were mere students are very much like the brother and sister who did not know about a parent abusing our sibling. We feel betrayed. We feel bewildered in understanding that verse from the Ten utterances on Sinai. Are we to honor a parent capable of such an act? It’s difficult to believe or trust anyone. The pain of others mocking and harassing you and this parent you are supposed to honor is difficult to bear or even understand. Trying to determine what one’s own role is in all this, that sound of mocking inside your skull that you should have known and done something, tears you up inside.

I cannot understand child abuse, be it from the point of the abuser, victim or those who were around and did nothing, either through the abuser’s deceit or through denial. However, eighteen years ago, I did learn about partner abuse the hard way, as the survivor of an abusive relationship. I did try to accuse this person and stop her from hurting others, and even with the blatantly obvious in front of them I was the one who ended up hated and discredited among my friends. All this has brought a lot of old and very painful memories to surface once again. That very painful episode of my life can give me insight to the current situation and to those of us who were students. Like the charismatic Style who could convince a bunch of grown men looking for superficial love to fight each other to dish out $4000 for a set of DVD’s they really don’t know are effective, my ex girlfriend could convince anybody of anything and make you want to believe. That’s the power of a charismatic individual who knows your needs. And while all this has been a little bit of a backslide for me in my own healing, maybe it does have a silver lining, that I am able to articulate what many who are right now silent want to say but are too numb to even find the words to say.

But there is two words which I’m sure have left many a set of lips: What now?

Ironically, it was my first Shavuot Tikkun L’eil that introduced to me an answer: the story of Elisha Ben Abuya and R. Meir. Ben Abuya’s story, in Hagiga 15a-b is called Aher, “the other.” The story was also lengthened into Milton Steinberg’s novel As a Driven Leaf. It is the story of a rabbi and of his apostasy during the early Mishnaic period. Yet this apostate continues to have an important student, R. Meir. One of the study sessions that first Tikkun L’eil in a small house in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago brought up the opinion that Aher was not an apostate after all. While I do not agree with that opinion, I ask the same question the rabbis ask in Hagiga 15b, how can Meir learn from this guy?

But how did R. Meir learn Torah at the mouth of Aher? Behold Rabbah b. Bar Hana said that R. Johanan said: What is the meaning of the verse, For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the Law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts? (Malachai 2:7) [This means that] if the teacher is like an angel of the Lord of hosts, they should seek the Law at his mouth, but if not, they should not seek the Law at his mouth!

But the teaching goes further when Resh Lakish has a response to his debate partner Johanan.
— Resh Lakish answered: R. Meir found a verse and expounded it [as follows]: Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thy heart unto my knowledge. (Proverbs 22:17) It does not say, ‘unto their knowledge’, but ‘unto my knowledge’.

To Resh Lakish it is God’s knowledge, not the knowledge of the teacher no matter how corrupt. Another two answers follow:

When R. Dimi came [to Babylon] he said: In the West, (i.e. Israel) they say: R. Meir ate the date and threw the kernel away.

Raba expounded: What is the meaning of the verse: I went down to the garden of nuts, to look at the green plants of the valley etc.?(Song of Songs 6:11) Why are the scholars likened to the nut? To tell you that just as [in the case of] the nut, though it is spoiled with mud and filth, yet are its contents not contaminated, so [in the case of] a scholar, although he may have sinned, yet is his Torah not contaminated.

These three answers are the guide I will follow in this case. Gafni said and did a lot of things, many of which are very difficult to forgive, and the man may be even more difficult to trust again. Yet he also taught a few kernels of truth that were God’s words, those were important. He inspired a lot of people to embrace Torah that never would have otherwise done so. Like the nut, we can remove the shell, follow the ethical path of Torah in our deeds and plant that seed of his truly holy ideas for further growth and learning. I am reminded of two other stories. Even the Great Hillel the Elder has fewer rulings in the Mishnah than his students, Beit Hillel. It is up to the students to find the good and grow it into something more.

As we get ready for the great holy erotic moment that is Sinai we also must remember that this was to lead to the dark erotic moment while Moses descended from Sinai: the Golden Calf. From the revelation at Sinai through the book of B’midbar, the men who witnessed those words would test God with repeated mistakes and sins. As we will read within the Book of B’midbar over the next couple of weeks, that testing will end not in the parents entering the Land of Israel, but the children. The teacher is gone: we can take time to weep and mourn and maybe even say the mourner’s Kaddish for a man who is still alive. For me at least, like a modern Aher, it would be impossible to believe or trust anything from him from this point on. Maybe we as the students with a little more rigorous and critical study methods than the master can find the nuts in the shell and the flesh of the date found in the teachings, and what was important can be transmitted on by us, and what can be thought of as holiness will survive and even thrive without the teacher.

I know there is a lot of emotion out there, I apologize to those who find this offensive right now. It would not surprise me if a lot of negative energy is about to be directed my way for writing this, but I needed to put out my opinion, in the hope it is a comfort to some, and admittedly to myself. There was a silence I could not let keep silent.