“I don’t understand why you have to tell everybody about your private life,” my dad said.
My dad and I weren’t arguing about my words. We were arguing about how I dressed. To be specific, we were arguing about a necklace I used to wear incessantly: rainbow-colored rings dangling from a silver chain. A symbol for the gay rights movement.
Each year, approaching Purim, I think about the conversations I’ve had with my dad since “coming out”—conversations about how and when I reveal this fact about myself. I think about why I wore the rainbow ring necklace: a symbol that I belonged in a certain community, a symbol of the struggle for visibility and acceptance. I think about why I wear a wedding ring: a symbol that reminds me of the love and commitment I renew each day. I think about why I wear a kippa: a symbol of my role and responsibility as a student rabbi. And I think about Queen Esther—no outward, visible symbol of her Judaism paraded before King Ahasueros. I think about Queen Esther, boldly approaching the king, demanding an audience rather than waiting to be invited. I think about Queen Esther, laying her life on the line to say: “Let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request. For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated” (Esther 7:3-4).
Influenced by my personal experience and by the work of one of my mentors, Professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (may her memory be a blessing), I have often looked at Megillat Esther as one long coming-out story: the tale of a woman who hid a part of her identity and, at great personal risk, revealed the truth to improve conditions for her entire community (For more on this idea, see Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet). The story of Esther certainly hinges on a dramatic moment of self-identification that Esther chooses.
But I’ve also been thinking about the Book of Esther in terms of the symbols of our identities, the brands we display and the loyalties and values we communicate through our choice of wardrobe. It might be a rainbow necklace or a wedding ring or a Steelers jersey. It might be a discreet star of David pendant or a tall black hat. What do these markers of self-identification serve? What do the symbols we wear communicate?
When I eat my breakfast on Sunday mornings in the Hampton Inn dining room, I am usually wearing my kippa. People always stare at me, whisper to one another—last month two women laughed at me openly. I definitely heard the word “Jew.” Rarely does anyone smile at me, say hello, and ask me about my “strange” head covering. And, I admit, I’ve never initiated such a conversation myself. I usually sit there, stunned and a bit annoyed, eating my oatmeal. I sit there, displaying a symbol that does not communicate what I intend it to communicate.
Symbols inspire solidarity. Wearing a symbol can be a welcoming wink to those “in the know”—like the rainbow rings I wore, which often brought supportive comments from older gay and lesbian people on the street, and which certainly signaled to other gay students on my college campus that I was a safe person to approach to discuss coming out issues. But wearing a symbol can also be a brick wall blocking out those who are not “on the inside.” Symbols insulate and isolate. And symbols can backfire, as we know all too well when the Star of David was cruelly transformed into the yellow star of the ghetto and the camps.
Although they can be misused, symbols still hold power. Some people wear their Judaism all day, every day. Why does it seem that more and more people, not just in faraway places but in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area, display their Judaism by wearing a certain style of clothing? A member of this community recently spoke with me about this phenomenon, asking, “Does it matter a great deal” to the God of Israel whether Jews walk in public with our heads uncovered?
For some Jews, the kippa is a sign of piety and humility. One wears a kippa to remind oneself that God reigns above us, that we are small in a vast universe. In the Talmud, we read about Rabbi Huna, who would not walk even a short distance with his head uncovered because, as he explained, “The Shechina—the Presence of God—is above my head” (Bavli Kiddushin 31a).
Over time, the custom of covering one’s head as a sign of piety or humility before God became Jewish law. No longer a symbol of personal faith or a physical reminder to the self, the kippa became the object of a law, formulated in cold, impersonal terms: “It is forbidden to walk four cubits with an uncovered head” (Shulhan Arukh Orach Hayyim 2:6).
And not only that, but the kippa has become, for some communities, a way to identify insiders and outsiders. In Israel, one learns to label men by their kippa: Is he a Breslav Hasid? A Hareidi Jew? An ultra-conservative religious Zionist? An environmentalist? The color, shape, style, and even placement of a kippa often sends a message that has nothing to do with God or humility or faith. It is a message of belonging and not-belonging, inside and outside. A kippa can cut off communication. A kippa can become a symbol of insulation or fear as much as it can be a symbol of pride or humility.
Why wear our Judaism on our sleeve?
In Jerusalem, I once saw an ultra-Orthodox boy and his little brother, tousling over a book while they waited for their mother on a park bench. Another woman saw the older brother slap the younger brother’s hand and she shouted out, איך מתנהג ילד עם כיפה? –“Is this how a boy who wears a kippa behaves!?”
A kippa might be a personal reminder of our smallness before God’s vast power and love. A kippa might be a sign of humility and faith. A kippa might indicate our status in a certain community or political group. A kippa might indicate our unwillingness to connect with those who are different from us. Or a kippa might signify that we are modeling Jewish behavior.
Like the kippa of that little boy in Jerusalem, our symbols indicate that we represent our communities. Our behavior reflects on the entire community—whether we like it or not.
For many in the gay community, this sense that we are representing more than just ourselves is keenly felt. I am sure that many of you feel such a sense of responsibility toward other Jews, living in a majority-Christian region. I have heard many of you tell stories about being the only Jew—or one of a handful of Jews—in your graduating class. I have heard stories of suspicious neighbors who wondered whether your hair was hiding those infamous Jewish “horns.” I have heard about the judgments ignorant non-Jews have made against you. How do we respond to those stereotypes and fears? Do we seek solace in symbols? Do we fear labels will hem us in? Do we use outward markers of our identity to raise awareness?
Esther didn’t wear her Judaism on her sleeve. On the contrary, she hid her true identity. Like many of us, she had a second name—rather than the Persian “Esther,” her everyday name, she also had a Hebrew name, “Hadassah.” Modern Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Telushkin calls Queen Esther “highly assimilated” (Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History, 103). Part of the surprise of the Book of Esther, Rabbi Telushkin suggests, is that this “unlikely” character would “risk her life on behalf of her people” (Ibid.). And yet this is precisely what Esther does: we read in the Megillah, ““I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esther 4:16).
Esther lives out her Jewish values, risking her life to put a stop to Haman’s murderous plot to destroy the Jewish people. Esther doesn’t don a symbol. She stands up. She speaks out. She takes action.
Esther risks being judged based on stereotypes about the Jewish people. Many of us know what it feels like to be seen only as the member of a misunderstood or maligned group. Gays and lesbians in the 1970s and 80s faced stereotypes that painted us as degenerates. Gays and lesbians were judged to be sick and depraved. We could not be productive citizens. And so many groups sought to counter these stereotypes. One group of women sought to let their actions demonstrate their values, changing social perceptions about the gay community. These women, like any good citizens, would help strangers in need—assisting someone climbing up onto the bus, carrying heavy groceries out to the parking lot, signaling for traffic to stop to allow the person in the wheelchair to make it safely across the street. After offering their help as they would naturally do, these women took one more step—a risky step. They identified themselves as lesbians by handing out a small calling card before walking away. The card read: “You’ve just been helped by a lesbian.”
The “Lesbian Helpers,” as they called themselves, tried to challenge negative stereotypes by doing good deeds. Their actions were neither publicity stunts nor insincere “tricks.” Their actions were genuine. But they did take that extra step to self-identify as lesbians. Why? Doing so motivated the people they had helped to rethink their perceptions about the gay community. Someone who thought all gays and lesbians were anti-social, destructive, sick people now had to integrate into their definition of “gay” this story of a complete stranger who had helped them kindly. I am sure you have encountered the kind of non-Jew who says, “Well, you’re not like other Jews, you know how they are.” You represent the “exception,” the Jew who is different than other Jews. But hopefully, eventually, the “exception” becomes the rule, and people learn that hurtful stereotypes inaccurately describe a multifaceted Jewish community.
Esther didn’t need a kippa or a rainbow necklace. She needed her own powerful voice, the support of her family and community, her convictions, and her courage. And yet, even if Esther did not rely on symbols, she did identify her Jewishness. In a way, Esther handed out her own calling card. The favored queen, Esther could have asked King Ahasueros to spare the Jews without identifying herself as “one of them.” And yet she spoke to the king as part of a community, as part of a we. “Let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request,” Queen Esther said. “For we have been sold, my people and I” (Esther 7:3-4). Esther cast her lot in with the entire people. Esther risked punishment for brazenly approaching the King this way. Esther risked death if Haman’s decree were carried out in the end. And Esther also risked ridicule and rejection at the hands of a man she called husband. What would he think when he learned that his beloved and beautiful Esther was … one of them? Queen Esther of Shushan—a Jew! Queen Esther of Shushan, kin to that “certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws” (Esther 3:8)!
And yet, here stands Queen Esther, tall and proud and beautiful, saying four short but immeasurably brave words: “my people and I.” Esther’s revelation could have brought death and destruction. Instead, the King changed his mind about the Jews, letting their actions (and not Haman’s lies or stereotypes) speak to their values.
When I think about Queen Esther, I think about my old rainbow necklace. I think about how I hid behind that symbol, used it—more often than not—to push people away.
We can let symbols cover and hide us like masks, like walls to keep insiders in and outsiders out. Or we can use symbols to remind us that we belong to something larger than ourselves, a Jewish community that lives Jewish values.
Now, when I think about my rainbow necklace, I think about other models for living our values and revealing our identities: Queen Esther pleading for the Jews not in the dispassionate voice of a humanitarian queen but with the very personal cry, “my people and I.”
[This post reflects my own views and does not necessarily represent the views of the congregation I am privileged to serve.]
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Collaborative Freedom
[Thank you to the community at Temple Beth Am in Monessen, PA for your amazing and valuable feedback on this sermon, given on 18 February, Shabbat Ki Tissa.]
Chaos replaced Law. The people gathered, but their leader could not discern whether their gathering was a rebellion or a celebration, a war or a party. After days and days of his absence, this leader finally descended into the throng. Enraged, he smashed the Tablets of the Law at the foot of the mountain.
Tonight, we stand at the foot of Mount Sinai. We, the people Israel, in despair and confusion, worried that our leader Moses would not return. We yearned for some tangible proof that the God who led us out of Egypt would not abandon us in the desert. We regressed to what we had learned in the land of our slavery. We made a mistake. Our minds still enslaved, we tried to fashion an outward sign of power and authority because we understood neither an invisible God nor a covenant with that Ultimate Being. We did not know how to be free.
Yet God, a God compassionate and gracious, taught us about freedom.
In this week’s paresha, we read about Moses’ ascent to the summit of Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from the very finger of God. Twice the Torah describes these remarkable tablets, shaped and carved by God from the stone of Sinai: in Exodus, chapter thirty-one, they are called “stone tablets written by the finger of God” (31:18), and in chapter thirty-two we read, “the two tablets of the Pact, written on both their surfaces […]. והלוחות מעשה אלוהים המה והמכתב מכתב אלוהים הוא חרות על הלוחות – The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, inscribed upon the tablets” (32:15-16). The Torah tells us that these Tablets represent nothing less than the Law of God inscribed by the finger of God on Tablets carved by God. Talk about the word from on high… Power and authority descend to us from the summit of Sinai in the hands of our leader Moses.
The Tablets bear the Law, our responsibilities under the covenant between us and God. The Torah tells us these tablets were “inscribed by the finger of God.” “Inscribed”—in Hebrew, חרות (harut). In the Mishnah, the rabbis play with this word, reading not harut but heirut—freedom. The Tablets are freedom, say the rabbis, “for no man is truly free until he occupies himself with study of Torah” (Pirkei Avot 6:2).
Law is freedom, heirut, say the rabbis. We are free when we study the Law, inscribed, harut, by the finger of God upon the Tablets.
We might read the rabbis’ statement as an endorsement of submission to law and authority. The finger of God inscribes the words and, following those words to the letter, we are free.
But, in this week’s Torah portion, God sends us a different message about freedom.
The Tablets of the Law, written by God, inscribed by the very finger of God upon tablets carved by God out of the side of the mountain—these remarkable Tablets lay shattered at the foot of Sinai, broken in Moses’ anger. But the covenant was not shattered with them. After anger and punishment come forgiveness and a new freedom, symbolized by a second set of Tablets. Are these second Tablets exact replicas of the first? Not quite.
God instructs Moses, “Carve two tablets of stone like the first, וכתבתי and I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered” (34:1). We already see a difference here: Moses must participate more actively in the creation of these new tablets which will bear the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. Moses will carve the shape of the tablets from the stone of Sinai, but God will write the words and inscribe them upon the tablets.
And yet, a few verses later, God speaks to Moses again, commanding: “כתב לך Write down these commandments” (34:27). Now it seems that God wants Moses to not only carve the new tablets but to write the words as well. The Torah says, “And [Moses] was with the Eternal forty days and forty nights; […] ויכתוב and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments” (34:28).
Wait a minute, ask the rabbis. Who wrote on these Tablets, the very Tablets preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies? Was it Moses, or was it God? Who is the subject of the verb ויכתוב, and he wrote? Our rabbis, thinking of God as “he,” worried over whether God wrote on the second set of Tablets or whether Moses did. Many classical commentators say that of course the Torah means that God wrote the second set (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Sforno). The rabbis note the apparent contradiction in the text: How do we reconcile verse 1, וכתבתי, God saying, “I will write upon the tablets,” with verse 27, the command to Moses to כתב לך “Write down these commandments”? The rabbis resolve the contradiction by ignoring God’s command to Moses to “write” and focusing on verse 1, the verse that says, Moses, you carve the tablets yourself, since you broke the first ones, but I, God, will write and inscribe upon them the Law. The worried rabbis seem to be saying, of course these sacred Tablets, carefully preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple’s very Holy of Holies, of course these Tablets were written by the finger of God.
But what if they weren’t? What if the second set of Tablets bore words spoken by God but written by Moses?
The rabbis envisioned freedom, heirut, through God’s Law inscribed, harut, in stone. Follow the Law to the letter and we are free.
But what if we think about freedom as emerging from that second set of Tablets, the ones written by Moses? Then heirut, freedom, emerges from a collaborative process—human beings and God working together. Freedom emerges when God speaks the words and Moses writes them, when Moses writes them and passes them down to the people, and when the people—when we—interpret those words so that we can live them out in freedom.
At the foot of Sinai, the people Israel felt lost without their leader. They did not understand a God they could not see. In their fear and confusion they turned to the ways of slavery, the habits of a people habituated to submission. God punished them for their idolatry and for their refusal to stand by the God of their ancestors, yet God also forgave Israel and re-established the covenant. God re-established the covenant through a second set of Tablets created in collaboration with Moses. God recognized that, in order to teach an enslaved people to live in heirut, in freedom, the harut, the inscribed law, had to emerge from power shared between God and human beings. כתב לך You write. Or, write for yourselves. And then you will be בני חורין, free people.
With their heirut, their new freedom, Israel created a portable reminder of God’s presence. In the next Torah portion, they build the sanctuary in the desert. They build it with their own hands and through their own free will. The place that will remind Israel of God’s presence among them, the site of communal rituals and gatherings—this place was built not by Moses alone or even by its primary artist, Bezalel. The sanctuary was built by כל אשר נדבה רוחו, by every single person whose spirit was generous (Exodus 35:21), by האנשים על הנשים כל נדיב לב, by the men together with the women, all whose hearts were generous (25:22). Indeed, this people who only recently became so frightened at the prospect of freedom and covenant gave so much of themselves that Moses had to tell them to stop. “Their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done,” says the Torah (Exodus 36:7).
God took the risk to say to Moses, כתב לך, write for yourselves. Write these words, although you may make a few mistakes. Write these words and live them in freedom, although you may misinterpret them at times. Write these words and build a community with the contributions of all its members, men and women, young and old—all whose hearts are generous are welcome to build this community, to live out this Law in heirut, not in submission to the Law, but in freedom through a collaborative covenant. כתב לך, write for yourselves. God will share the power and the responsibility. God will trust you to interpret the words and live them.
God understood how to transform an enslaved people into a free nation. God understood collaboration. And if tradition claims that even God was willing to take the risk to share power, then so much the more so ought power among human beings be shared. So much the more so should human political freedom emerge from collaboration.
Tonight, Egypt stands at the foot of its own Sinai of sorts. We have watched anxiously the anger and the violence, the demands and the celebrations in Tahrir Square—Freedom Square. We have heard the cry of a people demanding, as one protestor’s sign read, “Pharaoh Mubarak, Let the People Go!” We have worried about the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the implications for Israel—a reasonable response, for freedom is risky. How have we listened to the people’s cry for freedom, open access to information, and self-determination? Can we listen to that cry with our second set of Tablets in mind? Can we listen to that cry as the outpouring of so many—men, women, children, professionals and workers, religious and secular—so many individuals, each נדיב לב, willing of heart to write and interpret their own freedom?
We do not yet know what form Egypt’s freedom will take. And we tremble in fear, for the stakes are immeasurably high. Egypt is deciding how they will participate in the community of democratic nations, how they will live their collective national identity, how they will pursue freedom while allowing citizens to express their religious and political convictions. These struggles are so like the struggles of the Jewish people, trying to live out a covenant in freedom, trying to interpret and reinterpret ancient words while never, ever letting go of those Tablets, trying to elicit the willing hearts and contributions of each member of our community. Ours is a freedom that carries responsibility. Ours is a freedom that requires us to partner with God. I pray that Egypt’s freedom will be such a freedom: humble and responsible and collaborative.
[I am thankful to my homiletics instructor, Rabbi Margaret Wenig, and my classmates Jillian Cameron, Rachel Maimin, Lisa Kingston, Vicky Glickin, Daniel Kirzane, and Ilene Haigh for their comments on a draft version of this sermon. In thinking about the second set of tablets as written by Moses, I was inspired by an article by Bowdoin College Professor Aviva Briefel in which she talks about Moses as “plagiarist” (“Sacred Objects/Illusory Idols: The Fake in Freud’s ‘The Moses of Michelangelo,’” American Imago 60,1, 2003, pp 21-40).]
Chaos replaced Law. The people gathered, but their leader could not discern whether their gathering was a rebellion or a celebration, a war or a party. After days and days of his absence, this leader finally descended into the throng. Enraged, he smashed the Tablets of the Law at the foot of the mountain.
Tonight, we stand at the foot of Mount Sinai. We, the people Israel, in despair and confusion, worried that our leader Moses would not return. We yearned for some tangible proof that the God who led us out of Egypt would not abandon us in the desert. We regressed to what we had learned in the land of our slavery. We made a mistake. Our minds still enslaved, we tried to fashion an outward sign of power and authority because we understood neither an invisible God nor a covenant with that Ultimate Being. We did not know how to be free.
Yet God, a God compassionate and gracious, taught us about freedom.
In this week’s paresha, we read about Moses’ ascent to the summit of Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from the very finger of God. Twice the Torah describes these remarkable tablets, shaped and carved by God from the stone of Sinai: in Exodus, chapter thirty-one, they are called “stone tablets written by the finger of God” (31:18), and in chapter thirty-two we read, “the two tablets of the Pact, written on both their surfaces […]. והלוחות מעשה אלוהים המה והמכתב מכתב אלוהים הוא חרות על הלוחות – The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, inscribed upon the tablets” (32:15-16). The Torah tells us that these Tablets represent nothing less than the Law of God inscribed by the finger of God on Tablets carved by God. Talk about the word from on high… Power and authority descend to us from the summit of Sinai in the hands of our leader Moses.
The Tablets bear the Law, our responsibilities under the covenant between us and God. The Torah tells us these tablets were “inscribed by the finger of God.” “Inscribed”—in Hebrew, חרות (harut). In the Mishnah, the rabbis play with this word, reading not harut but heirut—freedom. The Tablets are freedom, say the rabbis, “for no man is truly free until he occupies himself with study of Torah” (Pirkei Avot 6:2).
Law is freedom, heirut, say the rabbis. We are free when we study the Law, inscribed, harut, by the finger of God upon the Tablets.
We might read the rabbis’ statement as an endorsement of submission to law and authority. The finger of God inscribes the words and, following those words to the letter, we are free.
But, in this week’s Torah portion, God sends us a different message about freedom.
The Tablets of the Law, written by God, inscribed by the very finger of God upon tablets carved by God out of the side of the mountain—these remarkable Tablets lay shattered at the foot of Sinai, broken in Moses’ anger. But the covenant was not shattered with them. After anger and punishment come forgiveness and a new freedom, symbolized by a second set of Tablets. Are these second Tablets exact replicas of the first? Not quite.
God instructs Moses, “Carve two tablets of stone like the first, וכתבתי and I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered” (34:1). We already see a difference here: Moses must participate more actively in the creation of these new tablets which will bear the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. Moses will carve the shape of the tablets from the stone of Sinai, but God will write the words and inscribe them upon the tablets.
And yet, a few verses later, God speaks to Moses again, commanding: “כתב לך Write down these commandments” (34:27). Now it seems that God wants Moses to not only carve the new tablets but to write the words as well. The Torah says, “And [Moses] was with the Eternal forty days and forty nights; […] ויכתוב and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments” (34:28).
Wait a minute, ask the rabbis. Who wrote on these Tablets, the very Tablets preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies? Was it Moses, or was it God? Who is the subject of the verb ויכתוב, and he wrote? Our rabbis, thinking of God as “he,” worried over whether God wrote on the second set of Tablets or whether Moses did. Many classical commentators say that of course the Torah means that God wrote the second set (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Sforno). The rabbis note the apparent contradiction in the text: How do we reconcile verse 1, וכתבתי, God saying, “I will write upon the tablets,” with verse 27, the command to Moses to כתב לך “Write down these commandments”? The rabbis resolve the contradiction by ignoring God’s command to Moses to “write” and focusing on verse 1, the verse that says, Moses, you carve the tablets yourself, since you broke the first ones, but I, God, will write and inscribe upon them the Law. The worried rabbis seem to be saying, of course these sacred Tablets, carefully preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple’s very Holy of Holies, of course these Tablets were written by the finger of God.
But what if they weren’t? What if the second set of Tablets bore words spoken by God but written by Moses?
The rabbis envisioned freedom, heirut, through God’s Law inscribed, harut, in stone. Follow the Law to the letter and we are free.
But what if we think about freedom as emerging from that second set of Tablets, the ones written by Moses? Then heirut, freedom, emerges from a collaborative process—human beings and God working together. Freedom emerges when God speaks the words and Moses writes them, when Moses writes them and passes them down to the people, and when the people—when we—interpret those words so that we can live them out in freedom.
At the foot of Sinai, the people Israel felt lost without their leader. They did not understand a God they could not see. In their fear and confusion they turned to the ways of slavery, the habits of a people habituated to submission. God punished them for their idolatry and for their refusal to stand by the God of their ancestors, yet God also forgave Israel and re-established the covenant. God re-established the covenant through a second set of Tablets created in collaboration with Moses. God recognized that, in order to teach an enslaved people to live in heirut, in freedom, the harut, the inscribed law, had to emerge from power shared between God and human beings. כתב לך You write. Or, write for yourselves. And then you will be בני חורין, free people.
With their heirut, their new freedom, Israel created a portable reminder of God’s presence. In the next Torah portion, they build the sanctuary in the desert. They build it with their own hands and through their own free will. The place that will remind Israel of God’s presence among them, the site of communal rituals and gatherings—this place was built not by Moses alone or even by its primary artist, Bezalel. The sanctuary was built by כל אשר נדבה רוחו, by every single person whose spirit was generous (Exodus 35:21), by האנשים על הנשים כל נדיב לב, by the men together with the women, all whose hearts were generous (25:22). Indeed, this people who only recently became so frightened at the prospect of freedom and covenant gave so much of themselves that Moses had to tell them to stop. “Their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done,” says the Torah (Exodus 36:7).
God took the risk to say to Moses, כתב לך, write for yourselves. Write these words, although you may make a few mistakes. Write these words and live them in freedom, although you may misinterpret them at times. Write these words and build a community with the contributions of all its members, men and women, young and old—all whose hearts are generous are welcome to build this community, to live out this Law in heirut, not in submission to the Law, but in freedom through a collaborative covenant. כתב לך, write for yourselves. God will share the power and the responsibility. God will trust you to interpret the words and live them.
God understood how to transform an enslaved people into a free nation. God understood collaboration. And if tradition claims that even God was willing to take the risk to share power, then so much the more so ought power among human beings be shared. So much the more so should human political freedom emerge from collaboration.
Tonight, Egypt stands at the foot of its own Sinai of sorts. We have watched anxiously the anger and the violence, the demands and the celebrations in Tahrir Square—Freedom Square. We have heard the cry of a people demanding, as one protestor’s sign read, “Pharaoh Mubarak, Let the People Go!” We have worried about the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the implications for Israel—a reasonable response, for freedom is risky. How have we listened to the people’s cry for freedom, open access to information, and self-determination? Can we listen to that cry with our second set of Tablets in mind? Can we listen to that cry as the outpouring of so many—men, women, children, professionals and workers, religious and secular—so many individuals, each נדיב לב, willing of heart to write and interpret their own freedom?
We do not yet know what form Egypt’s freedom will take. And we tremble in fear, for the stakes are immeasurably high. Egypt is deciding how they will participate in the community of democratic nations, how they will live their collective national identity, how they will pursue freedom while allowing citizens to express their religious and political convictions. These struggles are so like the struggles of the Jewish people, trying to live out a covenant in freedom, trying to interpret and reinterpret ancient words while never, ever letting go of those Tablets, trying to elicit the willing hearts and contributions of each member of our community. Ours is a freedom that carries responsibility. Ours is a freedom that requires us to partner with God. I pray that Egypt’s freedom will be such a freedom: humble and responsible and collaborative.
[I am thankful to my homiletics instructor, Rabbi Margaret Wenig, and my classmates Jillian Cameron, Rachel Maimin, Lisa Kingston, Vicky Glickin, Daniel Kirzane, and Ilene Haigh for their comments on a draft version of this sermon. In thinking about the second set of tablets as written by Moses, I was inspired by an article by Bowdoin College Professor Aviva Briefel in which she talks about Moses as “plagiarist” (“Sacred Objects/Illusory Idols: The Fake in Freud’s ‘The Moses of Michelangelo,’” American Imago 60,1, 2003, pp 21-40).]
Friday, January 21, 2011
A God Far and Near
Passing through the Sea of Reeds, with the water like a wall to their right and to their left, the people Israel praise God in song. Describing God’s mighty acts, the Song of the Sea praises God as ish milchama, a man of war. With anger and triumph, with a strong hand and marvelous wonders, God acts in history, performing miracles to prove that the God of Israel is incomparable, defeating Pharaoh with his courtiers and chariots and magicians and pantheon of gods carved in stone. Israel’s God of War sends a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, majestic and amazing and even perhaps terrifying. The God of Exodus is a transcendent God: beyond the limits of human experience, lofty and mighty, capable of deeds we could never achieve, huge in ways our mind cannot even comprehend.
God not only frees the people Israel from enslavement but brings them to the foot of Mount Sinai. There the people experience the cacophony of the giving of the Ten Commandments. A distant God sends forth a thunderous voice, and the people respond by recoiling in panic and fear: “[A]ll the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance” (Ex 20:15). Speaking from on high, God’s voice overwhelms the human senses. The God of Sinai is transcendent.
Yet the God of Sinai, the God who gives the Ten Commandments in a rush of wind and smoke, with the blast of the shofar and in a booming voice—this God of Sinai points to another image of God—a God not transcendent but immanent. This God of Sinai gives the Torah not to Moses alone but to all the people Israel—past, present, and future. This God of Sinai speaks the Ten Commandments to “you,” to each individual standing there at the physical Sinai, and to each of us, standing symbolically at Sinai each week when we ascend this bima to carry the Torah scroll to be touched and heard by our whole community. The God of Sinai is immanent: a God who dwells with us, a God who can and does act in the lives of individuals.
God as transcendent, God as immanent. God as incomprehensible, God as intimate. In many communities, these two contrasting images of God serve to close our service in the song Adon Olam, “Eternal Lord” (My People’s Prayerbook, Vol. 5, ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman). The poem Adon Olam begins with an image of the transcendent God as King, distant and mighty, but it ends with an intimate God, a God I can count on as an individual. Often we miss the remarkable lyrics, caught up in the many sing-song melodies for this typical closing hymn. Here is the entire poem, as translated in Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman’s guide My People’s Prayerbook:
Eternal Lord who reigned supreme,
Before all beings were created,
When everything was made according to His will.
Then He was called ‘King.’
And when all shall cease to be,
He alone will reign supreme.
He was, He is,
And He will be crowned in glory.
He is One. There is no second
To compare to Him or consort with Him.
Without beginning, without end,
Power and dominion are His.
He is my God, my living redeemer,
My stronghold in troubled times.
He is my sign and my banner,
My cup when I call on Him.
In His hand I trust my soul
When I sleep and when I wake.
And with my soul, my body too,
Adonai is mine. I shall not fear.
The beginning of Adon Olam presents an image of God the Judge and King. This is a God who always reigned; before creation, before there were even human beings to worship God, God ruled. In the moment of creation, with works to prove God’s power and with human beings to serve God, God is called “King.” Yet God will rule, as the poem says, “when all shall cease to be.” With or without creation, with or without human beings to worship God, this Eternal Lord, this transcendent God, has always ruled, will always rule. Past, present, and future, the transcendent God is eternal, “crowned in glory,” with no one to compare. This all-powerful God is distant and cold, a sort of Intelligent Design, scientific or philosophical God, a power that sets the universe in motion and withdraws to the heavenly heights.
And then, as Rabbi Hoffman notes, “just when the poem overwhelms us with God’s grandeur, it changes course to proclaim God’s intimate involvement with each and every one of us” (My People’s Prayerbook, Vol. 5, p 97). In the last two verses of Adon Olam, we each proclaim that this transcendent, mighty, all-powerful God is “my God, my living redeemer, my stronghold in troubled times.” This God is close and involved, like God at the end of the Noah story, giving the rainbow and a promise never to flood the earth in hasty anger again. But the God in Adon Olam is more intimate than that. This God, “my God,” is the one to whom I entrust every single night my very being, all that I am, in the faith that this same Eternal Lord who rules forever will return my soul to me each morning. As Torah scholar Dr. Ellen Frankel writes, “This awesome ‘Eternal Lord’ who made everything, who rules supreme, this very same being I am able to invoke by name: Adonai” (Ibid., 95, emphasis added). As we leave the safety of the sanctuary and walk out into the night, Jews declare faith in a transcendent God who is, for us, immanent—an all-powerful God upon whom we can call, in whom we trust our souls.
The final words of Adon Olam are “Adona li, v’lo ira”—“the Eternal is mine, and I shall not fear.” This is what Rabbi Hoffman calls “the greatest Jewish promise of all: [that] even the most miniscule and shattered of lives matter to the infinite intelligence of the universe whom we name God; since ‘Adonai is mine; I shall not fear’” (Ibid., 97). A powerful assertion: that this abstract notion we call God, this powerful being sitting in judgment over the entire universe, this all-knowing being cares for even the most imperfect, the most insignificant, of human experience. No matter who I am, God cares about me and for me. I matter to the Ultimate Being in the universe.
Where is this immanent God in the Ten Commandments? It is easy to identify the transcendent God at Sinai, with the overwhelming voice and the fire and the smoke and the thunder and the lightning and the blasts of the shofar. Yet it is God who, in this week’s Torah portion, encourages us to understand God as immanent, as with us, as in relationship with each of us.
After the parting of the Sea of Reeds, after the signs and the wonders, after the plagues and the drowning of Pharaoh and his chariots and his charioteers, God speaks to Moses and the people about their relationship. But God speaks not of mighty deeds and power and loyalty to the Eternal Lord who rules eternally. Instead, God says, “You have seen […] how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me” (Ex. 19:4). We sometimes associate the eagle with might and majesty, but this image of the eagle bearing the people Israel on its wings is the image of a parent bird teaching its young to fly (see, for example, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, p 413). God could have listed all the mighty acts it took to free Israel from Egypt, but in this first conversation with Israel in the wilderness, God does not focus on the kingly or the transcendent. Instead, God focuses on a loving relationship with the people Israel. God depicts this relationship as intimate. God informs the people of the covenant they will soon make at Sinai by invoking the image of a parent bird nurturing its young and teaching them to act on their own in the world. God says to each of us, through this covenant, I will teach you to fly.
Each of these ways of thinking about God—transcendent and immanent—can nourish us or push us away. Neither is “better” than the other, and the Torah offers us both ways to connect. In some ways, it is up to us: can we hold onto the notion that the created world, huge and powerful and incomprehensible and impersonal, moving according to scientific processes that certainly do not need us to continue in their natural cycles, might also contain a Divine power that cares for each of us? To be God’s chosen, then, would mean being cared for, being the young eagle lovingly taught by its majestic parent. But sometimes being chosen feels different; sometimes we wonder, if God is so very active in human life, precisely what God is doing. When we experience a tragedy, when we lose a loved one, when we struggle with infertility, when we face disease or loneliness, we do not always feel borne up on eagle’s wings, but cast from the nest before we’re ready to fly. Perhaps, in those moments, we’d prefer that God “choose somebody else for a change.”
This summer, in my hospital chaplaincy work, I often felt the pull of each of these ways of relating to God: transcendent, immanent. In the chaos and the accident of how disease strikes, I saw the transcendent God, what philosophers of the past called the “Unmoved Mover,” the power that created the universe and set all its processes in motion, then withdrew, letting the universe continue in its natural cycles and evolutions. I thought about a transcendent God who created the human body, with all its strengths and daily miracles, certainly, but with all its vulnerability and impermanence.
And yet how unsatisfactory that view can be when we face death or illness or uncertainty. I recall my conversations with a Pentacostalist Christian woman, lying in bed for months in the ward reserved for women with “at-risk pregnancies.” This woman, happily a mother of two, had already endured years of infertility, two miscarriages, and a stillborn child. She knew tragedy and pain, and now, here she was, facing an uncertain future. Where was God for this woman? When her baby went into cardiac failure in her womb, the doctors took her for an emergency C-section. She survived, but her tiny son did not. And as I sat with her and her husband, each of them asked, Where is God? Is God in this moment, now? Did God make this happen? Whether transcendent or immanent, none of us in that room could imagine a God who would make this happen or even “let” this happen. Instead, we found the intimate, caring God in the comfort we could offer one another. We found the immanent God in our ability to cry out to God and receive, not necessarily the answer we were looking for, but a response nonetheless. We found the immanent God in the Psalm that encourages us to reach out to God with all our emotions: “Out of the depths I call to you, God.”
In our darkest moments and in our most joyous, when we mourn and when we dance, in our sowing in tears and in our reaping in joy, we can fulfill our side of the covenant established at Sinai by relating to God both as transcendent and as immanent.
Even in those overwhelming Ten Commandments, God reminds us of the intimate relationship we are invited to cultivate through the covenant. When the people heard the overwhelming voice and the thunder and the lightning, they heard God begin, “I, Adonai, am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage” (Ex. 20:2). The first commandment is a declaration: I the Eternal am your God. Perhaps this is merely an introduction. But the Midrash interprets this commandment differently: “I am the Eternal [if I am] your God”—in other words, “I can be myself only if you acknowledge me” (Midrash haGadol in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, p 490). Here in the first commandment, the first words God speaks directly to the entire people Israel gathered at Mount Sinai, we find both the transcendent and the immanent God, both the God of all time and space (the immeasurable God) and the God of our individual days (the intimate God). “Anochi Adonai Elohecha,” “I am the Eternal your God,” we each heard at Sinai. Each time we conclude a service, we have an opportunity to respond, “Adonai li, v’lo ira,” “The Eternal is mine, and I shall not fear.”
Shabbat Shalom to the community at Temple Beth Am, and thank you to those of you who helped to inspire this sermon.
God not only frees the people Israel from enslavement but brings them to the foot of Mount Sinai. There the people experience the cacophony of the giving of the Ten Commandments. A distant God sends forth a thunderous voice, and the people respond by recoiling in panic and fear: “[A]ll the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance” (Ex 20:15). Speaking from on high, God’s voice overwhelms the human senses. The God of Sinai is transcendent.
Yet the God of Sinai, the God who gives the Ten Commandments in a rush of wind and smoke, with the blast of the shofar and in a booming voice—this God of Sinai points to another image of God—a God not transcendent but immanent. This God of Sinai gives the Torah not to Moses alone but to all the people Israel—past, present, and future. This God of Sinai speaks the Ten Commandments to “you,” to each individual standing there at the physical Sinai, and to each of us, standing symbolically at Sinai each week when we ascend this bima to carry the Torah scroll to be touched and heard by our whole community. The God of Sinai is immanent: a God who dwells with us, a God who can and does act in the lives of individuals.
God as transcendent, God as immanent. God as incomprehensible, God as intimate. In many communities, these two contrasting images of God serve to close our service in the song Adon Olam, “Eternal Lord” (My People’s Prayerbook, Vol. 5, ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman). The poem Adon Olam begins with an image of the transcendent God as King, distant and mighty, but it ends with an intimate God, a God I can count on as an individual. Often we miss the remarkable lyrics, caught up in the many sing-song melodies for this typical closing hymn. Here is the entire poem, as translated in Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman’s guide My People’s Prayerbook:
Eternal Lord who reigned supreme,
Before all beings were created,
When everything was made according to His will.
Then He was called ‘King.’
And when all shall cease to be,
He alone will reign supreme.
He was, He is,
And He will be crowned in glory.
He is One. There is no second
To compare to Him or consort with Him.
Without beginning, without end,
Power and dominion are His.
He is my God, my living redeemer,
My stronghold in troubled times.
He is my sign and my banner,
My cup when I call on Him.
In His hand I trust my soul
When I sleep and when I wake.
And with my soul, my body too,
Adonai is mine. I shall not fear.
The beginning of Adon Olam presents an image of God the Judge and King. This is a God who always reigned; before creation, before there were even human beings to worship God, God ruled. In the moment of creation, with works to prove God’s power and with human beings to serve God, God is called “King.” Yet God will rule, as the poem says, “when all shall cease to be.” With or without creation, with or without human beings to worship God, this Eternal Lord, this transcendent God, has always ruled, will always rule. Past, present, and future, the transcendent God is eternal, “crowned in glory,” with no one to compare. This all-powerful God is distant and cold, a sort of Intelligent Design, scientific or philosophical God, a power that sets the universe in motion and withdraws to the heavenly heights.
And then, as Rabbi Hoffman notes, “just when the poem overwhelms us with God’s grandeur, it changes course to proclaim God’s intimate involvement with each and every one of us” (My People’s Prayerbook, Vol. 5, p 97). In the last two verses of Adon Olam, we each proclaim that this transcendent, mighty, all-powerful God is “my God, my living redeemer, my stronghold in troubled times.” This God is close and involved, like God at the end of the Noah story, giving the rainbow and a promise never to flood the earth in hasty anger again. But the God in Adon Olam is more intimate than that. This God, “my God,” is the one to whom I entrust every single night my very being, all that I am, in the faith that this same Eternal Lord who rules forever will return my soul to me each morning. As Torah scholar Dr. Ellen Frankel writes, “This awesome ‘Eternal Lord’ who made everything, who rules supreme, this very same being I am able to invoke by name: Adonai” (Ibid., 95, emphasis added). As we leave the safety of the sanctuary and walk out into the night, Jews declare faith in a transcendent God who is, for us, immanent—an all-powerful God upon whom we can call, in whom we trust our souls.
The final words of Adon Olam are “Adona li, v’lo ira”—“the Eternal is mine, and I shall not fear.” This is what Rabbi Hoffman calls “the greatest Jewish promise of all: [that] even the most miniscule and shattered of lives matter to the infinite intelligence of the universe whom we name God; since ‘Adonai is mine; I shall not fear’” (Ibid., 97). A powerful assertion: that this abstract notion we call God, this powerful being sitting in judgment over the entire universe, this all-knowing being cares for even the most imperfect, the most insignificant, of human experience. No matter who I am, God cares about me and for me. I matter to the Ultimate Being in the universe.
Where is this immanent God in the Ten Commandments? It is easy to identify the transcendent God at Sinai, with the overwhelming voice and the fire and the smoke and the thunder and the lightning and the blasts of the shofar. Yet it is God who, in this week’s Torah portion, encourages us to understand God as immanent, as with us, as in relationship with each of us.
After the parting of the Sea of Reeds, after the signs and the wonders, after the plagues and the drowning of Pharaoh and his chariots and his charioteers, God speaks to Moses and the people about their relationship. But God speaks not of mighty deeds and power and loyalty to the Eternal Lord who rules eternally. Instead, God says, “You have seen […] how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me” (Ex. 19:4). We sometimes associate the eagle with might and majesty, but this image of the eagle bearing the people Israel on its wings is the image of a parent bird teaching its young to fly (see, for example, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, p 413). God could have listed all the mighty acts it took to free Israel from Egypt, but in this first conversation with Israel in the wilderness, God does not focus on the kingly or the transcendent. Instead, God focuses on a loving relationship with the people Israel. God depicts this relationship as intimate. God informs the people of the covenant they will soon make at Sinai by invoking the image of a parent bird nurturing its young and teaching them to act on their own in the world. God says to each of us, through this covenant, I will teach you to fly.
Each of these ways of thinking about God—transcendent and immanent—can nourish us or push us away. Neither is “better” than the other, and the Torah offers us both ways to connect. In some ways, it is up to us: can we hold onto the notion that the created world, huge and powerful and incomprehensible and impersonal, moving according to scientific processes that certainly do not need us to continue in their natural cycles, might also contain a Divine power that cares for each of us? To be God’s chosen, then, would mean being cared for, being the young eagle lovingly taught by its majestic parent. But sometimes being chosen feels different; sometimes we wonder, if God is so very active in human life, precisely what God is doing. When we experience a tragedy, when we lose a loved one, when we struggle with infertility, when we face disease or loneliness, we do not always feel borne up on eagle’s wings, but cast from the nest before we’re ready to fly. Perhaps, in those moments, we’d prefer that God “choose somebody else for a change.”
This summer, in my hospital chaplaincy work, I often felt the pull of each of these ways of relating to God: transcendent, immanent. In the chaos and the accident of how disease strikes, I saw the transcendent God, what philosophers of the past called the “Unmoved Mover,” the power that created the universe and set all its processes in motion, then withdrew, letting the universe continue in its natural cycles and evolutions. I thought about a transcendent God who created the human body, with all its strengths and daily miracles, certainly, but with all its vulnerability and impermanence.
And yet how unsatisfactory that view can be when we face death or illness or uncertainty. I recall my conversations with a Pentacostalist Christian woman, lying in bed for months in the ward reserved for women with “at-risk pregnancies.” This woman, happily a mother of two, had already endured years of infertility, two miscarriages, and a stillborn child. She knew tragedy and pain, and now, here she was, facing an uncertain future. Where was God for this woman? When her baby went into cardiac failure in her womb, the doctors took her for an emergency C-section. She survived, but her tiny son did not. And as I sat with her and her husband, each of them asked, Where is God? Is God in this moment, now? Did God make this happen? Whether transcendent or immanent, none of us in that room could imagine a God who would make this happen or even “let” this happen. Instead, we found the intimate, caring God in the comfort we could offer one another. We found the immanent God in our ability to cry out to God and receive, not necessarily the answer we were looking for, but a response nonetheless. We found the immanent God in the Psalm that encourages us to reach out to God with all our emotions: “Out of the depths I call to you, God.”
In our darkest moments and in our most joyous, when we mourn and when we dance, in our sowing in tears and in our reaping in joy, we can fulfill our side of the covenant established at Sinai by relating to God both as transcendent and as immanent.
Even in those overwhelming Ten Commandments, God reminds us of the intimate relationship we are invited to cultivate through the covenant. When the people heard the overwhelming voice and the thunder and the lightning, they heard God begin, “I, Adonai, am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage” (Ex. 20:2). The first commandment is a declaration: I the Eternal am your God. Perhaps this is merely an introduction. But the Midrash interprets this commandment differently: “I am the Eternal [if I am] your God”—in other words, “I can be myself only if you acknowledge me” (Midrash haGadol in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, p 490). Here in the first commandment, the first words God speaks directly to the entire people Israel gathered at Mount Sinai, we find both the transcendent and the immanent God, both the God of all time and space (the immeasurable God) and the God of our individual days (the intimate God). “Anochi Adonai Elohecha,” “I am the Eternal your God,” we each heard at Sinai. Each time we conclude a service, we have an opportunity to respond, “Adonai li, v’lo ira,” “The Eternal is mine, and I shall not fear.”
Shabbat Shalom to the community at Temple Beth Am, and thank you to those of you who helped to inspire this sermon.
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