Vayikra 5768: Parables of Sin

This week we begin Vayikra, otherwise known as Leviticus, 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.

During this week’s portion we read a line an entire chapter about classes of sins:

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and shall do against any of them; [Leviticus 4:1-2]

Again mentioning the same topic, we read:

27. And if any one of the common people sins through ignorance, when he does something against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and is guilty; 28. Or if his sin, which he has sinned, comes to his knowledge; then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he has sinned.[Leviticus 4:27,28]

The rabbis in Leviticus Rabbah spend a great deal of time asking some fundamental theological questions including “Is it our bodies or our souls that sin?”

While researching what I wanted to do this week, a parable caught my eye. Parables are known throughout rabbinic literature from quite early times. Indeed there is even a formula for a parable. At its most general, the formula would be stated.

A parable. To what can this be compared to? This can be compared to a… so too can …

Variations of this formula omit parts of the above general form. Parables are ways of talking about a very esoteric idea in terms of very common things and concrete stories. One such parable about learning is found in the Perkei Avot:

Elisha b. Abuyah said: He who learns when a child, to what is he [to be] compared? — To ink written on a new writing sheet; and he who learns when an old man, unto what is he like? — To ink written on an erased writing sheet.

To use Elisha b. Abuyah’s parable to explain parables, those with experience in the world have stuff you cannot completely erase. Parables are for those who have those experiences. Parables use those marks left over from erasing to build onto the new learning.

In the one I found this week, the rabbis are expounding on the phrase from Ecclesiastes 6:7 Neither is the soul filled. The rabbis use a parable to explain this:

R. Levi said: It is like unto a townsman who has married a royal princess; even though he feeds her with all the dainties in the world, he does not fully discharge his obligation. Why?-Because she is a royal princess. So, too, however much a man does for his soul, he does not discharge his full obligation. Why?-Because it is from on high. [Leviticus Rabbah IV: 2]

What does fulfilling the soul have to do with sinning? In another well known parable, the rabbis compare the soul and the body to two guards of an orchard. The king who owns the orchard reasons that since one of these guards is blind and one lame, they cannot get at the fruit of his orchard, and thus be trusted to guard the fruit. Yet the fruit is eaten, and the king figures out that the lame man sat of the shoulders of the blind man and together they got the fruit. So too, the Rabbis conclude, does the soul and the body work together to sin. [Leviticus Rabbah IV: 5]

Yet there is a rebuttal also in parable. The body and soul are like two women: a daughter of a priest and a commoner. Both live in the same household and both do the same sin. The master of the house takes the daughter of the priest to task and not the commoner because the daughter of the priest knew better. So too is the body like the commoner and the soul the daughter of the priest, it knows a lot better than the body. [ibid.]

When I first read the parable about the townsman and the royal princess, it seems when it comes to sin, we cannot win. The divine origin of our souls actually makes us less than perfect. We should try our best to not to sin, but inevitably, due to the nature of the body and soul our efforts will fall short. Ironically, to deal with sin is one of the gifts from God.

After reading the other parables mentioned here, and I began to wonder. There is a body soul connection repeatedly mentioned in the other parables. The parable of the princess and the commoner may also fit this pattern. The princess is the soul, and the body the commoner. The story of the orchard guards charges that the body and the soul are both responsible for sin. The story of the two women charges the soul responsible for sin. The commoner and the princess may likewise be emphasizing the responsibility of the body, but with a twist.

In popular culture and in the dominant theological thought pervasive in our culture, we hear of “animal urges.” The physical is the root of all evil in this view. The soul, being of divine origin cannot sin. According to this view the urge to sin is in our physical requirements, one that some in the world of science have tried to confirm. If we deny the body, the soul’s purity will shine through goes the argument.

Yet the princess and the commoner point to something else, a failure to communicate. Commoners and royalty do not talk the same language. The Soul does have desires and demands, ones the body tries to accommodate, yet fails. The body just can’t understand them. The princess wants a five star meal, yet the commoner brings home hamburger, fries and a coke. What the princess really wants is outside the experience of the commoner, and thus he fails. Sin often comes about because the body desires to fulfill the desires of the soul. Yet often, the way the body uses experience and sensation are inadequate to the task, and thus, even with the best of intentions we end up sinning.

The soul yearns for love and relationship, both with our fellow human beings and with God. The body all too often redefines relationship and love into exclusively physical sensation. Sex and touch becomes the body’s response for the soul’s yearning. Often the physical become the only way to fulfill that need for relationship, but as Ecclesiastes 6:7 noted: All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not filled. It is never enough, and more of the same is added. Having five Big Macs instead of one is still not a five star meal. We get more ridiculous in our attempt to satisfy the soul. From wanting relationship and love, we might get into a downward spiral trying to satisfy that with promiscuity, adultery and pornography. It is all too often in the news that some seemingly upright person has a downfall due to such sin, be it sex, drugs or other activity.

We cannot avoid sin completely, but we can minimize it. The solution in my view is not conventional thinking, but as the parables above intimate, it is very Jewish thinking. The lame man’s and blind man’s real job was to keep other people from eating the King’s fruit. If someone else comes by to steal, the lame man and blind man alone are as powerless to stop them as individuals as they are to steal the fruit themselves. However, the lame man can see thieves, and can tell the blind man who to catch going over the fence into the orchard. If they can work together to steal fruit, so too can they work together to guard the fruit. Both sin and virtue in their case is the same solution: good communication between them.

The princess and the commoner need to communicate. The princess needs to say “I want to go the 5-star restaurant down the street with real waiters and have a candlelit dinner there and a wonderfully prepared five course meal!” The commoner has to actually listen to this, and then say “Where to? I’ll make the reservations”. We need to integrate our bodies and souls. Both have their needs and both need to serve the needs of the other, taking joy in fulfilling those needs. As in any good relationship there is communication, there is give and take.

As any newspaper on any day of the week will tell you in their own parables, denying one or the other often leads to disaster. Sin happens. But sin does not have to control us; we can control sin, making it a minimal part of our lives. Understanding that both the body and soul are responsible and that we keep both our bodies and souls holy and in sync with each other we control sin. To combat sin is not just a matter of doing and not doing. We must always remember the mind-body connection.

Parshat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim 5767: Where’s the Golden Rule?

Leviticus 16:1-20:27

We read several times in this double reading an interesting phrase:

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy. [Leviticus 19:2]

And you shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from other people, that you should be mine. [Leviticus 20:26]

Bracketed between 19:2 and 20:26 is a massive list of mitzvot. If I counted right, there are around 50 to 60 mitzvot in all, though in some cases there are repetitions. Very few have to do with sacrificial law. Most have to do with every day life and every day people. Many could be defined as ethical.

If I were to ask most people they would be hard pressed to tell me 10% of that list. Could you name just five? Try it right now –stop reading for fifteen seconds and see how many you can list.

How many did you get? To be honest, I got three, the rest I didn’t know were here, till I began working on this week Drash. But looking through the list, I found five I missed that should be obvious:

1. You shall love your neighbor as yourself; [19:18]

2. You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reason with your neighbor, and not allow sin on his account[19:17]

3. You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind,[19:14]

4. You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people;[19:16]

5. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie one to another.[19:11]

Much of the ethical principles are there sitting in these two chapters. To do these ethical things is to be as holy as God. I have to wonder why we are not familiar with where the golden rule shows up in Torah.

One of the problems with education is there is a limited time to study an immense amount of material. IN much of the medieval period, Talmudic study was far more emphasized than Tanach – many students, it is clear did not study anything in Tanach that wasn’t referenced in the Talmud. Classical Reform, 120 years ago believed that the Torah was obsolete and that it was the prophetic literature we should study and teach. But one teacher gave a much simpler answer:

On another occasion it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, ‘Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.’ Thereupon he repulsed him with the cubit-length ruler which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, ‘What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.’[Shabbat31a]

All of Judaism is a commentary to Leviticus 19:17-18 according to Hillel. Yet there is another teacher who mentioned the golden rule:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (Deut 6) The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'(Lev 19) There is no commandment greater than these." "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." [Mark 12:28-33]

This story, also found in Matthew 22, cites Jesus as the source of the golden rule, and if you ask most people they will tell you the golden rule originates in the New Testament. The thing that disturbs me is how many times I’ve heard even Jews mention the golden rule as a Christian rule, totally unaware of Leviticus 19:17.

Hillel died around 10 CE, a few decades before Jesus was preaching. “The teacher of the law” may very well have been a direct disciple of Hillel, one of the members of the school known in the Talmud as Beit Hillel. Beit Hillel was the leading school of rabbinic Judaism and rather lenient in their rulings about halakah compared to their rival school Beit Shammai. Of Beit Hillel we know:

Hillel the Elder had eighty disciples. Thirty of them deserved that the Shechinah would rest upon them as [upon] Moses our teacher. Thirty of them deserved that the sun would stand [still] for them as [for] Joshua the son of Nun. Twenty were of an average character. The greatest of them was Jonathan b. Uzziel; the least of them was R. Johanan b. Zakkai. [Baba Batra 134a]

In an ironic understatement, Johanan b. Zakkai, the founder of the Academy of Yavneh, where Talmudic Judaism would be born, is the worst student. Eighty brilliant, dedicated teachers could easily spread the ideas over a good part of Israel. It is not extremely fanciful then to believe that even if a young Jesus never met Hillel he got a good education from Beit Hillel. To know this story and think that the golden rule was the second most important commandment behind the Shema and V’ahavta was part of his education. I’m sure he would be able to quote exactly where in Torah it was found.

While I am bothered by my not knowing where the golden rule is, I know where to blame. My early education was insufficient. My early Jewish education was almost exclusively Zionist. We leaned where Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was, learned about every victory of the IDF, and how wonderful a Kibbutz was, we learned that Israel made up for the Holocaust. We did do some ritual things, such as decorating Sukkahs and model Passover Seders. Yet, in about four years I learned only the first ten of twenty two letters in the Aleph-Bet. By the time of my bar mitzvah, I could barely read the Shema in Hebrew, nor had I ever looked into the text of Leviticus. Given our moving around, I prepared for my bar mitzvah at an Orthodox school and realized how woefully inadequate my education was. I was pretty much treated by faculty and students alike as treif for being ignorant, so counter to the verse from this week You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reason with your neighbor, and not allow sin on his account. [Leviticus 19:17] But I did learn at that Orthodox school a verse which fascinated me: You can not see my face; for no man shall see me and live. [Exodus 33:20]

At the same time I was introduced to Taoism in a high school comparative religion Class, with the first two verses of the Tao Te Ching

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao

The Name that can be named is not the Eternal Name

I saw a parallel between these passages of Torah and Tao. I asked my rabbi about it, who promptly and rather rudely rebuffed me. It was the last straw. I left Torah behind, and studied the Tao instead. I’m sad to say, I’m not the only one. All of the Jewish demographic studies point to an increasing abandoning of Judaism for either atheism or other religions. As this cannot be completely be accounted for by intermarriage, intermarriage itself may be a symptom of a bigger problem: a lack of a learned Jewish religious identity. If one erroneously thinks Mark and Matthew say the same thing as Torah, why stay Jewish? If anyone who has an ethical problem with the Israeli government is labeled a self-hating Jew, and is thus hated by other Jews, why stay Jewish? If Christians or Buddhists are more accepting of you for your ignorance of religion, why stay Jewish?

I did return to Judaism, but as a Baal T’shuvah of a sort, I do wonder how our educational system can make sure we do not make the mistakes made in generations past for the future generations. Jewish early learning has to be balanced between many things; Zionism, Ritual and Prayer are among them. But what is the most important is a love of the study of Torah. The next generation should know exactly where the golden rule is and where the Shema is in Torah. I don’t care if one is Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or another smaller stream, Torah is the foundation of a strong, vibrant Judaism. Each stream may teach those words with a different and divergent view but the words must bind all Jews together. It must be the core of our educational system. It is a lot of work to say the least, but R. Tarfon sums up my belief abut Torah education nicely:

He used to say: it is not [incumbent] upon you to finish the work, but neither are you a free man so as to [be entitled to] refrain from it; if you have studied much Torah, they give you much reward, and faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labor; and know that the grant of reward unto the righteous is for the future. [Avot 2:16]

While R. Tarfon may have meant by “future” was the afterlife, I believe in these times “future” means the future of the Jewish people. It is my hope we can all be righteous and holy enough for such a reward.