Parshat Vayetzei 5769: The Lord Was In This Face and I, I Did Not Know.

This week we begin Jacob’s journey to Padan Aram and his adventures there. After a divine encounter with a ladder, he meets his beautiful cousin Rachel, and instantly falls for her. After a bit of deception on his father in law Laban’s part, he ends up not with one, but two wives. With a good grasp of genetics, Jacob grows rich and eventually sneaks away from him. His now rather large family of two concubines, two wives, soon-to-be thirteen children and lots of livestock goes with him. But as he starts home, he realizes something: he will have to eventually confront Esau once again.
After his divine dream of the Ladder, and God’s assurances about his journey,

16. Jacob awoke from his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I, I did not know. 17. And he was afraid, and said, How awesome is this place! This is no other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. [Genesis 28]

According to the Rabbis, this event happened on the Temple Mount. Jacob was given a taste of where Jerusalem would eventually stand. That spot did become the gate of Heaven not just for Jews, but other faiths as well. Is that the only gate to heaven however? Can we understand there is another, far more portable gate?
I tend to look for that gate in one of my favorite teachings. I learned this from R. Arthur Waskow many years ago while I was on retreat in upstate New York. He was leading the morning minyan, praying in a circular tent known as a yurt. He gave us a rather fascinating teaching about a very interesting parable:

To proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, Blessed be He: For if a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. [Sanhedrin 37a]

Of course in Genesis we read.

27. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female He created them. [Genesis 1]

Therefore every face is the image of God, yet all are different. Reb Arthur had us stand in a circle and do the Barchu while looking into the faces of the other people in the circle. We blessed the Lord while looking into the Lord’s face – each others. It was non-traditional certainly, but it was a powerful experience I don’t think I’ll forget.
I don’t think Reb Arthur is the first to notice this. Two thousand years ago lived two rather famous rabbis, Hillel and Shammai. Their rivalry was legendary, only to be shadowed by the rivalry of their students. The classic story of Hillel and Shammai’s differences concerns the prankster who asked first Shammai then Hillel to teach them all of Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai wacked him with a ruler, and Hillel taught him the Golden Rule. Given that context, it is surprising to find this saying in the Perkei Avot:

Shammai used to say: Make your [study of the] Torah [a matter of] established [regularity]; speak little, but do much; and receive all men with a pleasant countenance.[Avot 1:14]

Shammai receives everyone with literally a beautiful shining face, which I often loosely translate as a smile. Note Shammai says all men, not just your fellow. All humans have a divine shine to them, including you. Where is this shine found the most? To understand that, let us look at a case where the shine is seen the least in this week’s portion. One of the sadder characters in this week’s text is of course Leah, who is continually trying to attract Jacob’s attention. Reuben Simeon and Levi are named with the idea that Leah will be loved once she bears children. [Genesis 29:32-34] Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to help. What made Leah loved so little? One answer is that Rachel was just so attractive, her sister couldn’t compete. The other is the one the text gives:

16. And Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17. Leah had weak eyes; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. [Genesis 29]

What exactly is meant by weak eyes is not clear. Rabbinic thought [B.B. 123a, Gen R. 70:16] believes she cried so much believing she would have to marry Esau, her eyelashes fell out. In a more literal exegesis, Leah’s eyes may have not been weak in vision, but in the range of expression. Much of our inner emotions are expressed by the eyes. As a painter, it is why I find eyes so hard to paint; the smallest change in shape gives a different expression. The window to the soul, as the expression goes, is the eyes. When Leah’s eyes didn’t work properly, it was difficult to look at her or pay attention to her.
I thought of this a lot last weekend when I tried a little exercise. In the summer of 2006, I began a self improvement program to turn the shy man I was into a more dynamic, social person. I even took an on-line course, with plenty of exercises to break my old patterns. Some were very unpleasant due to my fear of walking up to a stranger. That resistance translated into taking a lot longer to complete the course, with results far short of the expected outcome. In my frustration, I added one exercise to the curriculum. In the online discussions, I suggested it to people with even bigger shyness issues than me: Say hello to a certain number of people. I started with ten, then twenty five. By the end of the summer I could easily smile, look someone in the eye, say “hello” or “good morning” a hundred times a day.
Since then I haven’t really done that exercise. Recently, I’ve noted in myself a return to much of the isolation of my past. I thought re-doing this exercise would be a good idea. So I set the goal of greeting a hundred people over the weekend, primarily strangers. Depending if I count everyone in my synagogue, I either missed my goal by a handful, or exceeded it. It was once again hard to catch someone’s eye and say “Hello.” But something weird happened too, which didn’t happen last time. On a few occasions, I’d just say hello and a conversation would break out, whether I wanted it or not. In some restaurants, all of a sudden I got preferential treatment. All of the servers were congregating around me like I was some kind of movie star. Thinking about this later, I’ve realized what happened.
Since 2006, this has gone from exercise to habit, and I, I did not know. This exercise, which ended up as rather interesting social experiment, has yielded some very unexpected results. I greet people all the time and open myself up to be receptive to them. Some, I’ll admit are scared and suspicious of me and won’t look me in the eye. But most find a cheerful, open person who greets them in a friendly way and doesn’t mind listening to whatever they want to say. A lot of these people are counter help or customer service people or restaurant servers. Because I do it so often and naturally, people react openly to me.
I saw the opposite yesterday, in the throes of a bad head cold. Both with the lack of energy to keep up a good attitude and my eyes watering, I was not at my best. So with the weak eyes of a rhinovirus or just a busy day, both times it took a long time for the server to come over and take my order. I noticed two things in those interactions at lunch and dinner. One was internal to me. When my existence was not acknowledged, I got angry and started treating the server as an object with a specific function. The same thing happened at dinner. I realized what I was doing and decided I’d try a little flirting. Strangely enough the service improved from that point on.
We read about the divine connection of heaven and earth in Jacobs’s dream, with Angels going up and down the ladder. We each have a divine face, each face a rung on that ladder between heaven and earth. When we acknowledge a face, we acknowledge God, and that person can also acknowledge it in us. This builds up from a small interaction to the attraction of keeping this relationship going. The conversation ascends like the angels heading up the ladder of Jacob’s dream. There can be something special, maybe even holy, in this conversation about the mundane. On the other hand, this connection breaks down and people spiral downward into alienation when we don’t acknowledge them and they don’t acknowledge us. As social creatures we want to connect to others, and have others connect to us. Through fear of the unknown, we often don’t and isolate ourselves. Being so isolated, we no longer pay attention since there is seemingly nothing to pay attention to.
All it needs to start the process is for one person to come up, look into the other’s eye, smile and say “hello!” Both Hillel and Shammai understood this. Both said hello to the stranger. Shammai, when confronted with a silly question, lost his openness. The connection that Hillel made inspired more connection and study. If one is open to connection, one gets connection and one builds connections which reach toward heaven like Jacob’s ladder.
God is not just on the Temple Mount. The gate of heaven is in Target and Wal-Mart too. Not in the merchandise lining the shelves, but in the faces of those around us. Sadly we don’t often think or see that. In the most obscene examples, people are injured or die because of it. In a rush-rush stress of December, indeed all year round, remember to say a friendly “hello” to that counter help and your fellow shoppers. What was once a stressful mundane task may just become a beautiful holy one.

Naso 5768: Lifting the Head.

This week we have the census continued from last week, then laws seemingly regarding the detection of adultery. We then learn of the oath of the Nazir, and the physical and dietary requirements such a person must endure. We end with sacrifices in the Mishkan and the Kohanic blessing:

24. May the Lord bless you, and keep you;
25. May the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
26. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. [Numbers 6:24-26]

We begin with:

22. Take also a census of the sons of Gershon, throughout the houses of their fathers, by their families; [Numbers 4:22]

The word for census in Hebrew gives our portion its name. Naso in Hebrew means to lift or carry. The phrase used to mean takes a census is naso et rosh, Literally lift the head of. There is more to this head count than meets the eye. The rabbis noticed this phrase naso et rosh, occurring both at the beginning of our portion (4:22) and a few verses before in 4:2 was different that the rest of the counts in the book of Numbers:

LIFT UP THE HEAD OFS THE SONS OF KOHATH (IV, 2). It does not say Number (pekod) but LIFT UP THE HEAD OF, an expression denoting ‘elevation’. When they were numbered for the purpose of being put in charge of the work of the Sanctuary they received thereby Promotion [Numbers Rabbah IV:12]

To lift the head up is to promote according to this midrash. While the rabbis are discussing why the Levite clans of Kohath and Gershon are promoted and no one else is, I find deeper meaning than that. When walking on any street in any town note how many people look down. Most people do and for good reason. One might need to watch their step from uneven surfaces, cracks or holes in the sidewalk, and anything left by dog owners who were out walking their pet, or to be more specific, anything the pet left. Yet looking down also indicates something else: submission and obedience.

When one looks down it means that the person looking down has less value than other people. All too often this is the end result of a simple nonverbal gesture, an affirmation of one’s own inferiority by looking down too much. In contrast to this, one needs only to look up. To look up, indeed to look into someone’s eye is paradoxically a source of incredible power and an incredible signal of equality. Such a paradox is resolved in that a person who has power over themselves does not need to play the game of who has more power. Such a person wants to be on a strong, equal connection with another person.

In such a context, the Kohanic blessing has incredible meaning. In two different expressions, God faces us as equals. Interestingly, the ancient sage Shammai said something similar to the second blessing that God should shine upon you. Shammai believed we should receive everyone with a bright beautiful face [M. Avot 1:15]. I’ve always thought that meant a smile. One might go as interpreting the anthropomorphism that “God shines his face on you” means God smiles. The Kohanic blessing does not just bless us as equals but does so with a smile.

If God is in the heavens, then God cannot lift his head. Instead God “lifting his face” towards us to greets us as a neighbor and an equal. One interpretation in the Midrash notes this:

Another exposition is that THE LORD LIFT UP HIS COUNTENANCE, etc., means that He will turn His face towards you; for it is not the same thing for a man to greet his neighbor while looking him in the face as to greet him with his head turned to one side;[Numbers R. XI:7]

When a man and his neighbor both lift their heads towards each other there is connection: so too with a person and with God, or with Israel and with God. But such a connection requires habit and requires discipline. Much of this portion deals with the issue of commitment. Towards the end of the portion we have the sacrifices given by each of the tribes. But in the middle we have two curious customs.

The first is the bitter waters rite. In the case where a woman is accused of adultery with no evidence, essentially she is to drink a combination of dirt from the floor of the Mishkan, water and ink. If her belly and thighs swell she is guilty of adultery, if not, she is innocent. The second is the case of the Nazir, someone who dedicates themselves to God for a period of time. Such a person, as part of such an arrangement, must not drink or eat anything made from grapes, cut their hair, nor go anywhere near a dead person. If they go near a dead person accidentally they must wash, cut all their hair and start all over. In the Talmud, Nazir, the tractate about the Nazir is followed by Sotah, the tractate concerning the bitter waters rite. The rabbis start the discussion in Tractate Nazir, with the concept that these two are part of a string of tractates related to commitment, starting with Ketubim and ending with Sotah [Sotah 2a].

The bitter waters rite seems to be rather sexist, only concerned with the adultery of a woman, but I don’t read this literally. In prophetic literature and in the writings, Israel is the woman of the relationship. Such imagery even occurs in Deuteronomy

And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise, and play the harlot after the gods of the strangers of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.[Deut 31:16]

When Israel breaks the covenant, she is called a harlot and adulteress. How the faithful city has become a harlot! cries Isaiah concerning Jerusalem [1:21]. The bitter waters is exile as Isaiah describes strong drink shall be bitter to those who drink it [Is 24:9]. Israel must commit to God, and no one else. To stray from that commitment is to partake of the bitter waters rite, not something fatal, but something potentially embarrassing and uncomfortable. Such is true of exile as well. It does not kill Israel, but it does embarrass and brings discomfort to the connection.

While Parshat Naso does not read like story, I think it is an important part of story. Before the journey to the Promised Land begins there is a need to do two things. The first is to look up and forward to be in connection with God and with the goal; the second is to commit to the journey, even if it is uncomfortable or requires sacrifice or discipline. The Israelites need to do the sacrifices in this chapter, and commit to the goal. For one to remove all grape products from their diet and not cut their hair is a commitment. Neither might follow the social norm and the Nazir might suffer for it in daily life, but to do so is to commit to something bigger.

On our personal journey towards our personal promised lands, our first two steps are to raise our heads high and to commit to the journey. Neither is easy. Commitment requires a day-in and day out consistency. It is not something one does sometimes, or does recreationally. Not eating or drinking any grape product nor cutting one’s hair are examples. Daily sacrifices which morphed into daily prayer is another. Lois Jacobs once defined mitzvot into three types: those which we understand because of their practicality, those we don’t and those that are abhorrent. The class of those we don’t understand are functionally signs of commitment.

Yet for commitment to work to its fullest we must do something else first. We must raise our heads, and promote ourselves. If we do not believe we can do the commitment or if we believe we will fail, then we will fail. In two weeks, in Parshat Shelach Lecha, we’ll see this thinking in action. We must move beyond the submission of the slave with his head facing down, to the place of the free, proud to hold our heads high. This might be the greatest challenge of the journey. It’s too easy to fall into old patterns of submission. God does not want a timid, submissive concubine, but a confident, committed wife. In order to be fully human and holy beings, we too need to be both confident committed people.

Many have noted the Irony of Shammai’s statement in the Perkei Avot I quoted earlier. In full it reads:

Shammai used to say: Make your [study of the] Torah [a matter of] established [regularity] speak little, but do much; and receive all men with a beautiful shining face. [Avot I: 15]

Many know the story of Shammai and his rival Hillel. When a series of strangers asks stupid questions of Shammai, he chases away each of the three questioners with a yardstick, seemingly breaking his own statement. Hillel, on the other hand, answered the questions at the questioner’s level. Two of Hillel’s statements in the Perkei Avot are also significant:

Hillel used to say: be one of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, one who loves [one's fellow] creatures and brings them close to the Torah. [I: 12]

Brachot 34b in the name of Abbahu Comments on Isaiah 57:19 Peace, peace for him who is far off and for him who is near, says the Lord; and I will heal him. Abbahu believes those far off are those who are the biggest transgressors. To bring them close to Torah is holier than to bring one already there. This is the difference between Hillel and Shammai. While Shammai greeted friendly, he lost his patience with those who were far from Torah. Hillel on the other hand did not just have patience, but that such patience would bring close those who would otherwise not get close. He lifted the heads of those who didn’t even know they needed lifting.

Hillel also had one other well quoted statement as well.

He [also] used to say:
If I am not for myself, who is for me?
But if I am only for my own self, what am I?
If not now, when? [I: 14]

The phrase “self-esteem” is bandied around a lot today. Hillel would not have liked it, he probably would have preferred the term Value. It’s not that you need to increase your value alone, to raise your own head, but that you also increase the value of everyone around you. Shammai did not have the patience to increase those of low value. Hillel questioned what kind of person he was if he did not bring those who were far to be close, if he did not help others increase their value. Indeed, his own value increases even more by increasing the value of others.

This is something that cannot be procrastinated according to Hillel. It must be done, and it must be done now. In a sense it too is a commitment, one feeding all the other commitments. It is therefore interesting that the heads of the Kohahtites are lifted up first in the census. Among the Kohahtites are Aaron and his sons, who will give the priestly benediction to the people. In order to raise the heads of other people, God orders Moses to raise the heads of the Kohanim first who then learn a blessing to raise everyone else’s head by wishing them that God will raise his face towards them with a smile.

After my downer of column last week, I thought a lot about Hillel’s line “if not now, when?” Over Shabbat I thought a lot about them, and came to a few decisions, ones I had begun to hint at in my last column. My head has been looking down for months. As one colleague noted this is probably a function of my finishing Grad school. Another is that the Perkei Avot honors scholars, the world of 21^st century America doesn’t. Since January, society has effectively told me “over my dead body will you be a Jewish scholar.” I realized over Shabbat to believe such a thing was to lower my head. So I made a conscious decision to raise my head instead. During the week I made a conscious effort to pick up the heads of as many people as I could, and the results were astounding. When one gives value, it almost always comes back with interest. It was poignant moment this week when one morning when I was getting ready for the day, Jack Gabriel’s version of the Kohanic blessing came over my iPod. I cried listening to the words of this blessing to the tune of the Beatles Let it Be, knowing how true that blessing is not just for God but for the Image of God, Humanity.

So let’s lift our heads and let it be. Cayn Yehi Ratzon.

Passover 5768: The Quest for the Hillel Sandwich

During the Passover Seder, the Hillel sandwich is one of the last rituals before dinner begins. Even when I was very young, when my family celebrated Passover at my grandparents or at home, this was always the good part. This was when you got to eat the haroset for the first time. In our family, it is our tradition to make the Hillel sandwich out of haroset and matzah. But as I began to really explore the Haggadah, I found something out - its not matzah and haroset, but matzah and maror, which my family did as the step before when we eat the maror open-faced. The maror you were supposed to dip into the haroset, which really bothered me: how do you dip ground horseradish into the ground haroset? During the Passover seder, the second son asks, "what is this service to you?" In modernity, it often could be reworded "why are you doing these antiquated customs?" As the story of the Hillel sandwich will show they aren't static or antiquated, but show how dynamic Judaism really is.

In the early part of the first century CE, there lived a great Rabbi named Hillel. His most famous story is about the jokester who went to both Hillel and his rival Shammai and asked to be taught all Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai beat him with a T-square, and Hillel taught him the golden rule. The judgments, discussions, and stories of these two, their contemporaries and their students, were eventually written down and became the Mishnah, the foundation of the Talmud. But not all of what they did was written down in the Mishnah either. Some was orally transmitted for hundreds of years from student to teacher in what is known as a Baraita.

One finds a Baraita in the second part of the Talmud, the Gemara. The Gemara is again the discussions, judgments and stories of the later generations of rabbis, based on what was said in the Mishnah. These Rabbis lived after the destruction of the second temple. On page115a of the Talmud tractate Pesachim, the Hillel sandwich gets discussed, opening in a surprising way: "Said Hillel in the name of a tradition: A person should not wrap matzah and maror and eat." Hillel is saying not to eat a Hillel sandwich? What is going on? It turns out we have two different Hillels here, the Hillel speaking is Hillel II, a fourth century CE rabbi. His reasoning for no Hillel sandwich is that by his time, there's a missing ingredient. The Torah states in Exodus 12:8 "and they shall eat meat in that night, roast with fire, and Matzah; and with maror they shall eat it." In Numbers 9:11, we read "they shall keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs." with the destruction of the temple, there are no more sacrifices, and thus no usable meat. This creates a second dilemma. Outside of this sacrificial use, which we cannot do, maror becomes a rabbinical precept, not one from the Torah. All we read about maror and bitterness in our Haggadah is actually written in the Mishnah. And if a rabbinic precept and Torah precept are together, Hillel II maintains the Rabbinical nullifies the Torah's precept. So by eating them together, you kill the Torah based mitzvot of eating matzah, which is obviously a bad thing. Hillel II points Hillel the elder did put them together substantiated by Numbers 9:11. Hillel believed "it" is in the singular, so therefore the foods must be put together in one package. But, Hillel's companions disagree; it must be eaten with the Passover sacrifice separately, once with Matzah and once with maror.

Another Rabbi, Hillel II contemporary R. Ashi objected, that the real issues, isn't annulment of one mitzvah or another, but eating one sandwich may not fulfill all obligations for matzah and maror, nor may eating them separately, given the sacrifice situation. So he comes up with a compromise by changing from sacrifice to blessing. Now the obligation comes from the blessings and not the Passover sacrifice. The way to set up this procedure is to first bless the matzah and eat that, then bless the maror, and eat that. Each then has separate obligation. Finally take lettuce, wrap the matzah in it and without a blessing eat that, to remember Hillel, the temple and our missing third ingredient. This is why on many seder plates there are a space for both maror and lettuce.

So it would seem that R. Ashi has solved the problem. Today's Haggadah does use R. Ashi's procedure. First we eat matzah, then maror with haroset together, and finally matzah and maror. But this brings me back to my original question: why does my family use a different sequence: Matzah, Maror on matzah, and Haroset on matzah. I think a lot of it has to do with what we use for maror. Maror today can be one of three things: Lettuce, endive, or horseradish. We always use grated horseradish, as do many people. But the other two type of maror, lettuce and endive, are not eaten that way, but as whole leaves. In the agriculturally rich areas of the Mediterranean, it was probably rather easy to get these by spring. If that were so, then dipping endive into haroset or wrapping a piece of lettuce around a piece of matzah makes sense.

I'm guessing here, but in the Ukraine and Russia, fresh endive or lettuce in late March to early April were probably near impossible to get, or very expensive. The only viable alternative for the poor Jewish household was horseradish, and that was grated so a small piece went a long way. So traditions in eastern Europe arose once again on a people's best way to handle the current situation. When my great-grandfather came to this country, he probably had one tradition from the old country*, grated horseradish, which could only be dispensed easily on matzah. Similarly, to make sure the haroset was eaten, Hillel sandwiches were made with haroset and matzah. These traditions were passed down to my grandfather and my father. Of course, even if the books say otherwise, my Hillel sandwiches will be made with haroset too.

What excites me about this journey, is that we have a desire to perform a mitzvah, and when we cannot, we find a way regardless, even if we have to tweak a rule. We no longer have a Temple, so sacrifices are difficult to come by, but we change the rules so a matter of Torah, eating matzah and maror, can be performed. When living in a place where those rules cannot be followed, because no one can afford the maror necessary to do the mitzvah, those rules once again change.

At Passover we celebrate freedom, that there is no Pharaoh over us, no theocracy, no king. There is only God. Our tradition tells us that God gave us every rule at Sinai, and while the framework was written down as Torah, much of it then, and still today, we are unable to understand until the need is there- and its up to us to find it once the need arises. Even though the words never change, the Torah is not a Pharaoh, and ideas can change and adapt as we need to. We are not stuck doing exactly what they did in Egypt that first Passover, or at Sinai, or in the time of Solomon, because it's impossible for us to do so. Judaism is never antiquated as long as we are willing to take the time to adapt past Halakah to new situations. As I eat my Haroset and matzah this Passover, while remembering the temple in the name of Hillel, I will remember our beautiful dynamism as well.

(*) There is also a possible theory that the grated horseradish tradition actually creeped into my family in this country, via the Gold's horseradish company and bottled grated horseradish. If that is so, it probably started in my Grandfathers generation. However, how the traditions adapted still hold.