Parashat Mishpatim 5770
My colleague, Rabbi Tamar Miller, recently wrote on her blog the following quote from the Talmud that has me thinking about the significance of my life as I overcome the jetlag from my recent return from Israel with a synagogue group:
“ ‘The Talmud tells us that in the world to come, everyone will be called to account for all the desires they might have fulfilled in this world but chose not to…’ Desires are sacred according to the Rabbis. Who put them there if not God herself? There is no shame in wanting. No limitations to fulfilling our needs. Desire is a deep expression of life.”
Desire is indeed a deep expression of life. Our American ancestors expressed their desires when they fashioned certain hopes and dreams in the constitution that has become the credo of our nation since our liberation from England more than two hundred years ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Similar rights are expressed as part of the Torah’s message for this week, in Mishpatim, which means “judgments”. When God spoke to Moses about developing the Israelite nation into becoming an ethical and moral society dedicated to upholding the principles of the Divine Being, God did not stop at just the Ten Commandments. These were the ones that Moses recorded on tablets. The additional mitzvoth that are a part of the message for this week were delivered orally – and are just as valid and just as vital to establishing an ordered society built on “tzedek,” “justice” or “righteousness.”
We all have our own personal desires. And the sages tell us that when our time in this world comes to an end, the Heavenly Tribunal will be interested in knowing how we have accomplished what our hearts have set out to do to make that world a better place. For years I aspired to be the rabbi that I thought others wanted me to be, a scholar of the Talmud and the Codes, steeped in wisdom of the written page and the messages of the commentators on the borders of the text in the middle of each page. I tried to memorize their words, and to understand the struggles that they faced in their own generation for the purpose of quoting to others their words of instruction. What I discovered about myself is that my mind was not organized in that fashion. My interests in perpetuating Judaism lie in a different realm of wisdom and understanding.
My personal search for meaning and purpose has taken me to the world of spiritual guidance as it is practiced through “pastoral” counseling. I find myself nurturing the soul within me when I sit down with others and help them discover the Divine within themselves, especially when they are of little faith, and their belief in God is tested by the circumstances of this world, whether it be the death of a loved one, a life threatening illness, the lose of a job, the ending of significant relationship, or some other difficulty. In the educational course that I continue taking as part of a life long endeavor of enriching myself, in the same way that we thank God for the blessing of engaging ourselves (“La’asok”) in Torah (or a small “t” that signifies “learning” in general) as though it were a “business” venture (“osek” meaning “livelhood”), feelings and emotions as well as thoughts are the currency of my work. “In God We Trust” is a part of every conversation, even when God is not mentioned. We are told by the sages of the Talmud that whenever two people engage in the discussion of ‘torah’, the presence of the Shekhina hovers over them. What a comfort it is to know that God is with us in our conversation! My desire is to bring my own form of comfort and compassion to those who are in need, as God works through me.
However, I do not live in isolation of others who have desires of their own, and who form a community, whether it be a religious institution that stands be itself, or is part of a greater whole. In lat week’s Torah reading, Yitro offered some advice to Moses that was sound in nature. There is no way that he could be the arbitrator of justice for a community that large. Moses would need to share the responsibility of carrying out judgments by involving others in the process of forming a just society that is governed by mutually acceptable laws and statutes that protect the dignity of all of its citizens as they pursue “happiness” in this world. Knowing the laws, and spelling them out in detail, gives people the advantage of being more aware of the values that shape the tribes into what they wish to become as they fulfill their mission to be a guiding light unto the other nations, as stated by Isaiah, a future prophet of the Israelite nation.
This week I attended the funeral of a father of one of our congregants. I learned that he was a survivor of the Holocaust whose story is little known outside of his family members, because of the pain and the anguish associated with his memories of Vilna and the family that he lost, 89 members in total. While in Israel last week, the first place that we visited was Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial to those who perished at the hands of the Nazis, as well as a place to honor those who risked their lives to save Jewish souls by the planting of a tree in their honor. We give life to the past through our remembering. We preserve our future by our actions.
Many people live by a credo that helps guide their behavior as human beings. Judaism offers us a number of credos, words that spell out “what we believe, why we do what we do, and why we are what we are,” (according to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his d’var torah for this week). For those who struggled to survive in the Holocaust, the credo that emerged from the ghettos and the concentration camps are part of a song that is sung on Tisha b’Av, the day when we remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the fall of Judea to the hands of the Babylonians in one age and the Romans in another. “Ani ma’amin” is what we sing we are at our lowest ebb in energy, and our faith begins to falter. We weep through our tears, “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah… Even though he may tarry, nonetheless I will wait for him.” These words give us the strength and the courage to carry on, despite our doubts to the contrary, to work towards making our world a better place, because we believe in our mission to carry out the desires of the heart and the soul – to bring love to a world filled with hate.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks claims in his d’var torah for this week that it is vital for us to “believe that life has a meaning, that neither we not the universe are here by sheer happenstance. The search for meaning is definitive of the human condition, for we are the only life forms yet known in all the vast universe capable of asking the question why?” Where is meaning to be found? It is to be found in our desire to be in relationship with God and with one another with love as the foundation to our being. Love is what gives voice to the human heart, for we learn from the Torah that love transforms who we are. Love “rescues us from ultimate solitude.” It teaches us that we are never alone. “We exist because someone wanted us to be, someone who believes in us even when we lose belief in ourselves, who knows our fears and hears our prayers, giving us strength when we falter and lifting us when we fall…” writes Rabbi Sacks.
In Tzfat, the city where the mystics of the Jewish world settled, high up in the hilltop of the Galilee in Northern Israel, we learned that Rabbi Isaac Luria shared with others his vision of God who created the world by withdrawing Himself from the world out of love for the humans that He fashioned so that they would have a place to live. In retreating into the vessel that God thought would contain God’s essence, the vessel shattered and the sparks fell to the earth. Each time that we observe the mitzvoth, follow God’s commandments, we unearth a new shard, which is then restored to God. Through our good deeds and our acts of loving kindness, as outlined in Mishpatim and in other places in the Torah, we make space for God in our lives – in our hearts and in our souls.
We, too, create our world anew when we demonstrate Divine love to one another. In Leviticus we read, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In the Shema, which we recite twice each day, from the Book of Numbers, we remind ourselves, “You shall love Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your very being…” No less than thirty six times Moses reminds the Children of Israel to “love the stranger for you know what it feels like to be a stranger.”
As I contemplate on my world and how it is filled with love and devotion, as well as the desire to increase these things as part of my interactions with others, honoring their dignity by bringing comfort and compassion to the sick and to the infirmed, and to those who are grieving – I find it difficult to imagine a world without love and the desire to make our home a better place for all humanity to live and to thrive! As Rabbi Sacks states, “There is another way of seeing the world and our place in it…” However, is this the way we desire to see ourselves, living in a world in which there is no reason for our being created, and no reason for our dying? “We are born, we live, we die, and it is as if we had never been. Our ideals are illusions, our hopes mere dreams. We have no souls, only brains; no freedom, only the hardwiring of our genes…” And what about love? May we all discover the desire that leads us to a better understanding of ourselves and our relationships in life.
