Thursday, March 22, 2007

Parshat Vayikra 5767: Sacrifice, Prayer and Return

Leviticus 1:1-5:26

This week we begin Vayikra, otherwise known as Leviticus, which starts with the procedures for different types of sacrifices. We learn how we are to essentially deplete barnyards of animals for different types of sacrifices, some for transgressions, and others for thanksgiving. For vegetarians, we learn that only one type of plant material, grain, is burned while all others are not. First fruits are not to be burned according to the text, but part of the meal offering is. Different classes of sins are then enumerated.

I’m still coming down from the experience of last week, where I spent an incredibly intense but fulfilling week immersed in Jewish theology in general, and the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel in particular. Between that intense week of school and this parasha’s mitzvot concerning sacrifices I’ve had a lot to think about recently. We do not do all of the mitzvot, because many of them, like the Temple sacrifices have become impossible to do. Yet, after the destruction of the second temple, we have the Rabbis coming up with alternatives to the sacrifices. One substitution we will all do in a few weeks during Passover will be at our Seders:

The altar of wood three cubits high . . . . And he said to me, This is the table that is before the Lord (Ezek. 41:22) [Now the verse] opens with ‘altar’ and finishes with ‘table’? R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both explain that as long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him. [B. Brachot 55a]

Today, eating at our dining room table is the place we make those sin offerings we made once in the temple. As I usually explain Kashrut to people, it’s not primarily about health —Maimonides made that up. It’s about the sacred: when we eat at our dining room table we need to make it as holy as the Temple, and make our dining room food as pure as the temple sacrifices. We can by extension of this idea live a life as though our whole house is the temple and thus live a Holy life.

Yet there is another substitution for sacrifice as well:

R. Joshua b. Levi says: The Prayers [i.e. Amidah] were instituted to replace the daily sacrifices. [B. Brachot 26b]

Much of what was once our sacred moments in the Temple are now prayer. By the time of the redaction of the Mishnah, we read:

Simeon the Tzaddik was one of the last of the men of the Great Assembly. He used to say: the world is based upon three things: the Torah, Divine service, and the practice of kindliness [M. Avot 1:2]

While it has lost some of its original meaning in modernity, for the rabbis these three things, the study of Torah, prayer, and the ethical performance of the mitzvot were critical to Jewish existence. Using the metaphor of a stool with three legs, many, including Heschel would point out that a stool with two legs does not stand very well, and one leg is even more precarious. Yet today, we often try to balance ourselves on a one legged stool. Indeed, I was one of those people who fell off that stool.

How did we get to this place? One answer comes out of Heschel’s work. Heschel differentiates between two kinds of thinking: Greek and Jewish. He believes they are ultimately incompatible, and when combined damaging to both traditions. To put this in terms of story I thought about two different images, one Greek one Jewish. On the Greek side we have the story of Apollo and Daphne. The Greek god Apollo once fell in love with Daphne, a river nymph. She did not like Apollo, so one day he sees her and chases her, and she runs away from the god in fear. As Apollo pursues and catches up she cries for help to her father, a river god, who turns her into a linden tree. Apollo from then on tears off branches from the linden tree and puts them in his hair as a decoration, to be near his love.

On the other hand there is Heschel’s theology from God in Search of Man in a story form. After Adam and Eve eat the fruit and hide from God in the Garden of Eden, God looks for them asking ayecha “where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) searching the Garden for Adam. God has been asking that question ever since. For Heschel we don’t need God as much as God needs us to say a rather existential Hineni “I am here.”

What I find intriguing about these stories is that in the Greek story Daphne would rather be turned into a tree than love Apollo. That is the Greek thinking, the logic of A or Not A. It’s the thinking of putting people into impersonal categories of similar things, of exploitation and depersonalization much like Apollo rips limbs off Daphne for hair decoration. In this thinking there are only two alternatives: Either one is alive as the love slave of a god or one becomes a tree. In Biblical thinking however, one may be trying to hide from God. God does search for us, and has quite a lot of patience in that search. Yet, everything changes when our behavior changes, when we say “I am here” as did Abraham or Moses. As we enter a deeper relationship with God, the embarrassment that made us hide or turn away disappears by being with God. Like all relationships it is personal and mutual. We are treated as individuals in our particular circumstances, and not categories. The biblical story could be viewed as a repeated attempt for God to find us to have that relationship, and the numerous times we run way.

In terms of modernity that there are many Jews who see the Judaism that has been predicated on Greek thinking. Rather than getting close to an exploitative, rigid God many end up with the ultimate Greek thinking of wanting to be a tree, in other words leaving the religion. Demographics back this up, with numbers as high as half to two thirds of the American Jewish population wanting to be “trees”, becoming secular or converting to other religions, rather than holding up those three pillars. We are still running away, yet this time in a perilously more permanent fashion of the Spiritual Holocaust that Heschel fears. Yet if all we do is begin to turn and say “here I am,” we find God loves us and we love God.

I was once a “tree.” A decade ago, I knew neither Torah nor Prayer nor Mitzvot very well. What I did know was a few rules and not any intention, any Kavvanah. The Jewish educational system failed me, and probably failed many of my entire generation. My experience at least, in both Conservative and Orthodox schools did not lead me to be a good Jew. Because of that, I left Judaism for the religions of the East, primarily the mysticism of Zen and Taoism. Yet I came back into the tradition. I somehow began to turn, to begin the process of saying “Here I am”.

There is a term for what I am in Hebrew: Baal T’shuvah. That could translate to a master of repentance, or someone who repents. We think often, as we did in this weeks’ portion, of repentance in terms of transgressing a mitzvah and needing forgiveness. But the word repentance in Hebrew has a deeper meaning. Its root is the word to turn around, to reverse direction. Teshuva means to return. When God is searching for you and you are fleeing, to turn around means you return, making it easier for God to find you and begin a relationship with God. And thus the most common meaning of Baal T'shuvah is someone who turns back and reclaims Judaism as their religion.

There is no one Jewish Theology, and as such we must struggle to find our own. So for one of my classes, I’m answering the question of what is Shlomo’s theology. In two words I’ve called it Aggadat T'shuvah, which intentionally can be translated a variety of ways. In a world like ours, it’s a theology of return, a story and commentary of that process as well. Fundamental to that, is the question of how to keep all three legs of the stool of the world standing: none can be missing.

Yet the leg of Avodah, service to God through prayer, is a struggle. What do we pray and how do we pray? Given changes in my Friday night traditions, it’s something I’m revisiting personally. Moving from communal prayer to private prayer on Erev Shabbat has meant I’ve needed to figure out what my liturgy will be. Every week I look at my shelf of suddurim from Orthodoxy, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Renewal, and wonder which one to pick up, what I pray and what I don’t. I also wonder how I am to pray. Do I sing to myself or just read the words silently? Do I say these things in joy or do I rapidly read them through, making sure my reading is accurate? Do I just make things up or use a traditional prayer? The choices are overwhelming.

I have yet to come to all the answers, but I believe any theology of return must be based on a solid foundation of tradition. We may struggle with the tradition and end up rejecting or modifying it, but only by using the tools that built that foundation of tradition, not whim or mere emotional attachment. Even when we reject a tradition, we do not forget it, for it may be useful in the future. That has been the story of Judaism for millennia. For prayer, I made that foundation on the older traditions and actually pray from an Orthodox prayer book. My reasoning is quite simple: It’s more complete. I have many problems with the Orthodox liturgy, such as the Brachot ha Shachar, I quite often will skip stuff or as in those morning blessings, modify what is there. But unlike other prayer books, it is all there, and thus I can find the prayers. A solid foundation comes from all the tradition, not a version where much is deleted, only to be forgotten.

Three thousand years ago things were much easier. One bunch of guys, the Cohanim, did the work, all an Israelite had to do was hand over the goat or cow or pigeon. By the time of prophets like Jeremiah, there was the prophetic complaint against Israel mechanically making sin offerings then going back to sinning, never changing their behavior. That lack of intention left us without a Temple but with prayer replacing sacrifice. Even with the destruction of the Temple, the intention in prayer, coupled with the regularity of prayer, helps Jews survive spiritually. Prayer, like sacrifice, brings the transcendent God to dwell among us as God dwelt in the Mishkan of old.

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