Feb 25/06 - Shabbat Mishpatim / Shabbat Shekalim: Jewish Spirituality 101

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

It took anthropologists more than a century to recognize that the concept of “primitive” was largely a political tool for justifying the treatment of native peoples around the word as savages awaiting the blessings of “modern” civilization. Then we went through a phase of admiring native or aboriginal cultures for their closeness to the earth, spirituality, and wisdom, as though they were purer and more elevated than Western (mainly European Christian) cultures.

Now we have struck a balance between these extremes: we recognize that while native cultures may offer us insight into living in harmony with the earth, cultivating spirituality, and acquiring wisdom, they also suffer from life-threatening illness and violence. We study them—and ancient civilizations as well—in order to strike a balance in our own lives and cultures.

This week’s Torah portion, like last week’s, is devoted to an ancient truth that has been overlooked in our own time and led to deterioration in the quality of some aspects of Jewish communal life. We live in a time when Jews have dismissed one of the most important elements of Jewish self-definition: the idea that the health of our life as a people depends on commitment to a shared body of rules and expectations that will govern how people behave.

Thinking that we in our time are the exception to ancient, hard-won truth, we have constructed a fantasy that our ancestors were somehow radically different from us—that they were more community-oriented, more tribal—while we live more pluralistic, multifaceted lives. This view is challenged by numerous texts that suggest that our ancestors were fully aware of the diversity of people’s opinions and of the egotism and narcissism at work in human beings.

For example, Yitzhak ben Ya’akov Alfasi, an eleventh-century Moroccan rabbi known as “the Rif,” cited an ancient rabbinic teaching that said if a single Israelite had been absent at Mt. Sinai, the Torah would never have been given. Everyone had to be there to receive his or her unique portion in the Torah. The Rif cites a teaching of Rabbi Aharon haLevi:

“It is for this reason that the Torah was given to six hundred thousand people. It was the will of the Holy One that the Torah be accepted by all factions and the six hundred thousand included all factions and opinions.”

In a text called the Pesikta d’Rav Kahane that is at least half a millennium older than the Rif’s writings, we read:

“I am YHWH your God” (Exodus. 20:2): Because God appeared to them at the Reed Sea like a hero in battle, at Sinai like a scribe instructing them in Torah, and in the days of Daniel like an elderly teacher, He said to them: “Just because you see Me in many images, this does not mean there are many gods. I, the God of Sinai, am also the God of the Reed Sea.” Said R. Levi: God appeared to them like a statue which looks in every direction. A thousand people look at it, and it looks at each of them. Thus when God spoke to Israel, each Jew said: “It is to me that the voice is speaking.” “I am YHWH thy God”—in the singular, not the plural.

And in another work from over 1,500 years ago:

“Moses speaks and God answers him with a voice” (Exodus 19:19). Come and see how the voice reached Israel, each according to his own strength. The old people heard the voice according to their strength; the young people heard it according to their strength and the children according to theirs, and the women heard according to their strength. And even Moses according to his strength, which is the meaning of “Moses speaks and God answers him with a voice”—with the voice which Moses was able to bear. [Tanchuma, Shemot 25]

Finally, in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88b we read:

Rabbi Yochanan said: What is meant by the verse, “The Holy One gives the word; those that bring the tidings are a great army” (Psalms 68:12)? Every single word that went forth from the Omnipotent One [at Sinai] was split up into 70 languages [that is, all the languages of the world]. The School of Rabbi Ishmael taught: just as a hammer divides into many sparks, so every single word that went forth from the Holy One split up into 70 languages.

Knowing that, even two thousand years ago, it was understood that everyone personalized and interpreted the word of God does more than suggest that our ancestors understood how easily people simply drift into defining everything in their own way, without attention to others. Our ancestors also understood that no society, no group, can survive if there are no shared commitments, understandings, or expectations to govern behaviour arising from personal interpretations. Families, synagogues, country clubs, legal and medical societies, and even larger human associations all have rules. Villages, towns, cities, provinces, and countries all have rules.

Most people believe that the rule of law enables people to live and benefit from their associations with each other. We insist that breaking laws should have consequences; no one would live comfortably in a society in which we have no penalties for those who commit murder, steal, drive while drunk, or commit other acts of violence against others.

This week’s Torah portion is a major break from the narrative of the formation of the Israelite nation. Beginning with the giving of Torah at Mt. Sinai and—with a few notable exceptions—throughout the balance of our year’s Torah reading, we will read passages that form the basis of halachah, a word often misunderstood as “law.” In that process of establishing the rule of law lies the real drama of Jewish history. You may say that it’s only a collection of laws and rules, but, as in the case of any society, the meaning of life, the values, and the principal spirituality of that society are found not in individual, isolated encounters with God conveyed in poetry, song, and expansive metaphors. No, the spirituality of a people is defined in how they treat each other, establish and support boundaries and the rule of law to teach respect for others.

In North America, decades ago, we committed a colossal blunder by teaching our children that a mitzvah is a “good deed.” Mitzvot are actions that enhance our lives, but most of them are not acts of charity to those less fortunate than us. Mitzvot define the Jewish awareness of what it means to be alive and connected both to God and to other people.

By this broader definition, a mitzvah is not only an act of selflessness or charity, but rather a responsibility we fulfill in order to be connected to others. A mitzvah reminds us that we have an ideal and that we want to live up to it. When we view mitzvot this way, we realize that mitzvot include many very personal and even private activities, and not only deeds directed at achieving social justice.

The most difficult thing to understand about this is that decency, civility, and trust arise not out of the extraordinary encounter with God but rather out of what we do with what God has said once we bring God’s words back to others and try to figure out how we can work together for the common good. God wants us to clean up and treat each other with esteem. The rituals and rules found in the remainder of the Torah for the rest of this year are directed to creating relationships of respect—not relationships defined by a drunkard’s walk of human particles colliding randomly on a dance floor, but that of dancers who join together and move toward love by being alert and attentive to each other’s rhythms and needs.

Shabbat Shalom.