Leviticus 25:1 – 27:34

The Evolving God of Our Understanding                                       

The last Torah portion in the Book of Leviticus, B’chukotai, begins with: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments…” [Lev. 26:3] and continues with defining for us all the rewards God will bestow upon us for doing so. It then goes on to say: “But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, if you reject My laws and spurn My rules… and you break My covenant, I in turn will do this to you…” [Lev. 26:14-16] and proceeds to graphically detail all the punishments that would result from such behavior.

That God deals in rewards and punishments, however, is an idea that no longer works for the overwhelming majority of modern western thinkers. This anachronistic idea has brought many to abandon religion altogether. The thought that righteous behavior yields success, prosperity and peace, and sinful behavior brings disease, poverty and fear — though it might have influenced the people of antiquity — is no longer useful; for it is simply not true. But the solution is not so much that religion needs to be done away with along with this ancient notion of God; rather we might be able to save both by awakening to a new idea of God — to “evolve” God to meet our modern minds. Why? Because at the source of the old biblical concept of a punishing or rewarding God lies the outdated notion that the Divine is solely otherworldly; a Great Puppeteer separated from His Creation.

“Evolving” God to a new understanding is exactly what our sages did several hundred years ago. Already at the time of the Renaissance sixteenth century mystics like Rabbi Moses Cordovero or Rabbi Isaac Luria of the kabbalistic school of Safed in northern Israel, presented a revolutionary nondual theology. With it, the idea of God as exclusively “out there,” external to, or other than, the manifest Universe was replaced by a vision of God which — while still recognizing its transcendent aspect — added the notion that God is not only fully present in the manifest Universe, but that He is that Universe through and through. Two hundred years later, at the dawn of Modernity, the founding figure of Chassidism; Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (the Baal Shem Tov, 1698-1760) and his many successors in the Chassidic movement, made this nondual, panentheistic theology the central pillar of their belief system, defining God through “negative theology” which claimed that there is no one that God is not, no where that God is not, no when that God is not, nothing that God is not.

With an idea of God better fitting to our twenty first century sensitivities, rooted in Kabbalah and early Chassidism, we come back to the biblical text with a different set of eyes. Wearing our nondual reading glasses we recognize that, in this story, God is the bestower of reward and the rewarded, the punisher and the punished all at once. We come to realize that one of the deeper teachings available in our text is that, inherent in Creation, is the existence of light and darkness, plenitude and pain; and that both are expressions of the Divine One. This dualistic experience is simply par for the course of our lives. The more we resist it, the more we seek to exclusively experience the light, want only happiness and rewards, the more we set ourselves up for suffering. The true reward of the spiritual path — of taking up the covenant — however, lies in the acceptance that our lives are a series of “acts of God” some fortunate, others tragic, that we neither cause nor have control over. As we let go of our need for our human experience to be different than what it is (or what it was,) and are able to embrace both the light and the shadow of life with equanimity, we come closer to experiencing our true Divine nature, the nondual Essence of Being that we are.

Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23

Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27

This week’s Torah portion marks the beginning of what is known as the Holiness Code which will span the rest of Leviticus. This Holiness Code is a code of conduct, a guide that seeks to define a powerful spiritual practice, a way of being and acting in the world for the Jewish people. This all-important text begins with:

…

I am the Eternal One your God. You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their traditions… You shall observe my decrees and regulations, through the practice of which human beings shall live: I am the Eternal One.[Lev. 18:2-5]

This sets the tone for creating a Holiness Code that sets apart, that distinguishes the Jewish people from its Canaanite neighbors. In the early years of the Israelites’ settlement of Canaan this made perfect sense. All of us too, in our formative years, have spent much energy shaping our unique identity by defining who we were based on what we were not; differentiating ourselves from the social norms, and adopting behaviors antithetical to those in place (see parents for details.) No wonder that the Hebrew word for holy, kadosh, also means “separate.” In the formative years of the Jewish people, such a Holiness Code solidified a specific Jewish identity through unique practices that were antithetical, as well, to those in place in Canaan. Three thousand years later, however, does the Holiness Code and the Halacha as its offshoot still serve this purpose, or has it evolved to embody something else? In other words, should post-modern Jewish identity still be tied to a Holiness Code?

In our days, many see these biblical verses as God denouncing assimilation. They argue that the Jewish people are in danger of disappearing for having too readily adopted the culture and practices of their host nations. Abnegating the teachings of the Torah — the precepts and values of our tradition, the practices that make us unique and, therefore, separate — they claim, threatens our very survival. There are deep truths in their argument. In many aspects, the culture in which we live is far from being holy; it is violent, hyper-sexual, unjust, and altogether values-confused in many ways. We might, indeed, be better off sticking to our time-honored traditions, our Holiness Code, in order to maintain a healthy moral and spiritual compass. But does that mean that we, as Jews, are to remain stuck at a reactive teenage level of consciousness in order to continue defining our sense of identity in this global world?

Let’s be honest though, there is a plurality of ways to express one’s Jewish identity in the 21st century. In truth, there has always been a plurality of ways. While many preach the myth of the once-upon-a-time “one way” everyone was Jewish, this has never been the case in our 3000 year history. Perhaps, in our days, we have taken this pluralism a little too far, however, and our Judaism has become individualistic to the extreme — each of us picking and choosing from the Holiness Code what works best for our lifestyle but without being consistent with that either. Is what’s left still Judaism then, or have we hollowed it out so much that it is no longer recognizable as such?

The answer to these questions, I suspect, lies in the middle. Not in the rejection of modernity as a threat to Jewish survival and, consequently, a fearful withdrawal into the rigid container of the ancient Holiness Code. Not in the rejection of this Holiness Code altogether as irrelevant and passé and, consequently, cutting ourselves off from our Judaic heritage which for generations has gifted us a spiritual practice that has helped us live more ethical, loving, compassionate, values-centered lives. No; our day calls for a re-interpretation of our Holiness Code, of our Halacha, in a way that would make it relevant to our post-modern global lives. And not just “relevant,” but essential to it. A spiritual discipline that would help bring balance to the multidimensionality of our exponentially complex global lives. Perhaps, contrary to the original Holiness Code of Leviticus — which sat out to separate the Israelites from their neighbors in a reactive way — this Holiness Code of tomorrow would set out to redefine an evolving Jewish spiritual practice that would proactively contribute to uniting the nations of the world as one diverse human race on one precious and fragile planet. And on that day, kadosh, the Hebrew word for holiness would no longer be understood as “separate,” rather it would have to rise to a loftier meaning: that of “integrated.”

This week’s Torah portion begins with:

The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people thus: When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be impure seven days; she shall be impure as at the time of her condition of menstrual separation. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. She shall remain in a state of blood purification for 33 days: she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed. If she bears a female, she shall be impure two weeks as during her menstruation, and she shall remain in a state of blood purification for 66 days. On the completion of her period of purification, for either son or daughter, she shall bring to the priest, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a purgation offering. [Lev. 12:1-6]

On the surface, these six verses seem challengingly patriarchal for our modern egalitarian sensibilities. Besides seemingly painting women as contaminated pariahs, they also appear to paint a picture of a people who sought to dissociate itself from the body and its fluids. It is true that our male ancestors, who wrote these texts, had a certain aversion for blood — as it evoked death in their minds — betrayed mostly by their rulings around menstruation and, here, around the heavy bleeding that commonly accompanies the first days of postpartum. One needs to remember, as well, that menstrual cycles were not a private matter in biblical times. There being no hygiene products for women, menstruation cycles were mostly public knowledge. At the same time, it wasn’t uncommon for expecting mothers to die in childbirth which, for men, colored with dread and fear a process from which they were mostly excluded and, consequently, ignorant about.

Looking beneath the surface, however, we find that one of the striking aspects of these verses is the clear parallel between this postpartum purification ritual — especially in the case of a male child — and the mourning ritual in Judaism. That a woman remains “impure” for the first seven days after giving birth, echoes the first seven days of the “shiva” period for a mourner. In the same way, the “blood purification” which lasts about a month in our biblical passage, resembles the “sh’loshim” (month-long) period of mourning post “shiva.” And so, perhaps, for us to understand the deeper meaning behind this apparent postpartum segregation of women, we need to look at the “whys” behind these mourning rituals of shiva and sh’loshim.

Anyone who has ever observed for themselves or participated in the Jewish mourning process knows that one of the key aspects of carving out these sacred times of shiva and sh’loshim, is that they free the mourners from any personal or communal responsibilities in order that they may be fully present to their loss and engage wholly in their grieving process. Space is created around the mourners for them to simply be; to breathe through the deep emotional rollercoaster and, often, spiritual opening that come with such experience, and is mostly due to them being in more vulnerable and spiritually attuned states. It seems to me that a mother’s experience in the days following her giving birth resembles closely that of a mourner. It is not so much that the mother is ostracized from the community postpartum, it is that she is gifted sacred time and space not only to heal physically, but also to be emotionally and spiritually with her newborn child. She is, in fact, being protected from the burden of family and community duties in order to focus on the baby and herself. These Divine commandments were, perhaps, the earliest rulings in human history regarding maternity leave. Unfortunately for them, as we see here, the boys didn’t get to spend as much time bonding with their mother as the girls did. Then, like now, gender differentiation was a communal process that began right at birth.

One practice we have lost from those biblical days, that touched me when I read these verses, is the concluding ritual that the mother was blessed with. She would go to the Temple in Jerusalem at the end of the 33 or 66 days of her maternity leave, and — whether she gave birth to a boy or a girl — offered sacrifices as a way to mark the completion of her process and her transition back into the community. Though we wouldn’t offer sacrifices today, we might be inspired to revisit this powerful havdalah (transition) ritual for mothers to mark the movement from sacred time back into regular day-to-day life.

As our weekly reading resumes, following the end of Passover, we are met by one of the most mesmerizing stories in Torah: the fiery death of Aharon’s sons Nadav and Avihu. Most rabbis explain their deaths as Divine punishment and as a cautionary tale “against spontaneous worship… and the unrestrained desire to ascend to forbidden heights” as Nehama Leibovitz highlights in her commentary. Due to the complexity of the Hebrew, however, no one can fully grasp the ultimate meaning of the story.

Moses and Aharon then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Eternal appeared to all the people. Fire came forth from the Presence of the Eternal and consumed the burnt offering… And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. Now Aharon’s sons Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and brought-near, in the Presence of the Eternal, a strange fire, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came forth from within the Presence of the Eternal and consumed them, so that they died within the Presence of the Eternal. Then Moses said to Aharon: This is what the Eternal meant by saying: Through those near to me I will be known as Holy…
[Lev. 9:23-10:3]

With the nearness of the holiday of Lag BaOmer, the fire that consumed Nadav and Avihu connected me to the legend of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. In Israel, every year, on the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer (Lag BaOmer,) people gather around bonfires to mark in festive ways the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. In the northern Galilee town of Meron, 300,000 people make a pilgrimage to his grave on that day. Why? The legend describes Rabbi Bar Yochai as a towering mystical figure; the author of the Zohar (the Book of Splendor) — the seminal composition of kabbalistic thought — and perhaps the only Jewish mystic known to have spent years meditating in a cave after fleeing for his life from the Roman armies. Once out of his hiding, it is told that Bar Yochai began to reveal the deepest secrets concerning God and Creation to his disciples. Rabbi Abba, one of his students, became the scribe for Bar Yochai’s oral teachings. As Rabbi Bar Yochai was on his death bed, revelation after revelation came pouring out of him at an increasingly faster pace, as if in a race against time. On his last day, a force within compelled him to share all the mystical teachings he had yet to reveal. The sun was sinking, Rabbi Abba was writing, but there was too much to write down. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai kept speaking, Rabbi Abba kept writing, the rest of the students saw the sun standing still, refusing to set. Suddenly a fire began burning all around the house. No one could enter, no one could leave — Bar Yochai dictating with urgency, Rabbi Abba writing furiously. Finally, Bar Yochai finished, and a fire-like radiance, a brilliant light, filled the house as his soul departed his body.

In those last moments of his legendary life, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai merged with the One Light of Being. He remembered the Light he had always been, and became that Light. He had drawn near to the Presence of the Eternal and was transformed into a strange fire, a radiance, a burst of Light. The mythical story of Nadav and Avihu speaks of a similar experience. Aharon’s two sons, just like Bar Yochai, are described by some rabbinic commentators as “towering personalities… [and] men of exalted saintliness.” These two holy beings can’t help but be transformed in the overwhelming Presence of the Eternal, and the strange fire they bring near is the Light of Being they awaken to in that moment. They, like Bar Yochai, die in a burst of Light, merging with the One Light of Being in a spiritual ecstatic self combustion. But legend or myth is not to be taken literally. These stories act as mirrors to deeper spiritual truths. What is described here might be an experience of the “little self” combusting in the awesome awakening to one’s own Light. What is consumed in such a moment of en-light-ment — outshined by the Light of the Divine Presence — is that separate sense of self. But what is revealed, born in that same moment, is one’s true identity, the true Light of one’s Infinite Being.

Thursday is coming to a close, and tomorrow night is the first night of Passover. I just finished cleaning our house and I can’t imagine there could be any chametz left anywhere. Chametz is the Hebrew word that stands for all leavened foods forbidden during Passover (wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt and their derivatives.) The outer act of cleaning our homes — of emptying our homes from chametz — is there to trigger the beginning of an inner process of emptying ourselves from our leavened ego, our puffed-up-ness, which will continue to unfold over the eight days of Passover.

Tonight, as the sun sets, I will gather my children around me, and the three of us will walk through the house at the light of a candle to symbolically look for the last bread crumbs that might have escaped my spring cleaning. I always look forward to this moment. It connects me back to my childhood and doing this with my father and brother, like my father did with his father growing up. Generations of Jews have repeated this ritual called b’dikat chametz year after year for the last two millennia, collecting the crumbs in a container to be burnt in the morning (biur chametz.) Lior, my 8 year old son, asked this morning — as he was watching me getting the house ready — why Passover is such an important holiday compared to others? The first answer that came up for me was that, however religious, whatever our beliefs or lack thereof, Jews all over the world will be sitting at the Seder table tomorrow night, retelling the story of the Haggadah and partaking of the foods of the Seder plate. Perhaps this holiday, more than any other, is one which connects us through time to all the generations that have come before us, a celebration that is foundational to Jewish identity.

This year, Passover begins with Shabbat. The candles we will be lighting are primarily those of the holiday, though we will acknowledge Shabbat in our blessing. All the blessings tomorrow night will, in fact, hold the energies of both the Yom Tov — the Festival — and the Shabbat. We will be doubly blessed this year. Of course there will be no challah at dinner. The blessing over bread will occur during the Seder as we bless the matzah. Matzah is called lechem Oni, the bread of the poor. This is the bread symbolic of our deflated ego; the bread of humility. This is the bread that we brandish in the air at the very beginning of our telling the story of Passover and declare: “Ha Lach’ma anya…”

This is the bread of affliction, the bread of simplicity, which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who have become estranged or alienated come and eat. All who are yearning for Spirit are invited to come and celebrate the transformation that can happen at Passover. At present we are caught in our limitations; next year may we expand ourselves and truly be in the land of Israel–the land of Divine wrestlers. Now we are still in bonds. Next year may we all be free.

The account of the Haggadah begins with an invitation addressed to anyone who is hungry. Anyone who is hungry may come and celebrate Passover with us. Liberty begins through an invitation to share one’s bread. It is not a question of liberating oneself, but of discovering liberty face-to-face with another person.

From my family to yours, may you find this year’s Passover journey to be deeply meaningful.

A few years ago, at our annual Bet Alef Community Seder, I shared with those in attendance — members and non-members alike — a tradition that has been in my family for, I suspect, many generations. Growing up, I remember looking forward to this ritual where my grandfather (of blessed memory,) at the beginning of the Seder, would come around the table and gently tap the top of our bowed heads with the still untouched Seder plate, while chanting a short phrase in Hebrew. It felt like I was participating in a millennia-old ritual, being blessed through the hands of my grandfather by all the symbols of the Seder plate touching the crown of my head. It was always a deeply humbling moment that never failed to give me chills.

It is only two years ago, when I embarked on the project of writing a new Haggadah for the Bet Alef Community Seder that my studies led me to discover the deep Kabbalistic connections to this family ritual. Who and when in my North African Sephardic family had integrated this Kabbalistic ritual, and how did it come to be a family tradition? I guess I will never know. But I thought I would share it with you as part of these Passover Reflections as it now appears in the Bet Alef Haggadah:

In the kabbalistic tradition of Rabbi Isaac Luria (16thcentury Safed,) each symbol of the Seder plate corresponds to one of the Sephirot — or one of the qualities — of the mystical Tree Of Life.
The three Matzot represent the three higher Sephirot of Chochmah (Wisdom,) Binah (Understanding) and Daat (Knowledge). The shankbone points to Chesed (Kindness) while the roasted egg is understood as a symbol for Gevurah (Strength). Maror is connected to Tiferet (Heart space,) Charoset to Netzach (Endurance,) and Karpas to Hod (Splendor). Chazeret is assigned to the Sephirah of Yessod (Foundation,) and the Seder plate itself is viewed as Malchut (Kingdom,) the Sephirah that contains all the other higher Sephirot.

Yet, one Sephirah is missing — the highest of them all — that of Keter (Crown).
In this Sephardic ritual, the crown (Keter) of our head makes contact with the Seder plate, symbolically adding each of us as the last ingredient. We are the missing Sephirah which makes the Kabbalistic Seder plate complete. We are the beings through which the Divine energies can flow through our Keter to give life to the entire Tree.

The image of the three matzot, from our Haggadah, holds powerful kabbalistic teachings. The upper matzah is associated with Chochmah, the expression of God’s Wisdom. Chochmah is the first step in the primal process of transition from pure potential to the first point of existence. The image our mystics use is that of the Torah existing prior to the birth of letters and words. The upper matzah symbolizes the initial impulse to create within us, that remains formless and undefined; the awareness within that exists before words. The lower Matzah is Binah, the receptive counterpart to Chochmah. Binah shapes and refines the creative impulse within, that emerges from Chochmah. This matzah represents the shaping of an idea within us from our initial indistinct inspiration. Daat, which I see as the middle matzah, is the hidden Sephirah of the Tree of Life. Some think of it as the Tzelem Elohim, the reflected image of God embedded in all human beings. This is the matzah that is broken in two pieces with one piece being hidden during the Seder, only to be found at the end and eaten as Afikomen/desert. With that, the ritual of the Seder can be conceived as a mystical conduit to help us find anew, help us remember the Tzelem Elohim that we are, the image, the reflection, the embodiment of the Divine that we have always been.

So join us for our Community Passover Seder, whether you are a Bet Alef member or not, on Saturday April 7, at the Mercer Island Community Center. Together we will explore the deeper mystical teachings embedded in the Haggadah, and free ourselves from those places of stuckness that prevent us from deeply knowing the One we are.

Although we closed the Book of Exodus last week, with Passover around the corner, its stories linger still in our consciousness. This is the time of the year, personally, when I delight in re-opening the Passover Haggadah and in looking inside for more treasures to be revealed. Two years ago I compiled a new version of the Bet Alef Haggadah, drawing from many sources and teachers that have inspired me along the years. I thought, this year, that I would invite you into my own process of preparing myself to meet the holiday, by sharing excerpts from the Bet Alef Haggadah that call to me:

Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim means “narrow places.” Our Egypts are those places in our lives that have become lifeless — aspects of ourselves that feel constricted, bound up, unable to be expressed. Our Egypts [also] represent our falling into the dullness of everyday life, the deadening routine of an existence where we have lost consciousness. The Haggadah tells the story not only of our Exodus from a physical Egypt, but perhaps most importantly, our exodus from an Egypt of a deadening mindless rut, where things lose their taste and meaning as a consequence of repetitiveness. Delving into the Hebrew for the word “Haggadah” suggests a way out of our enslavement. The word comes from the root “nagod” which means “to oppose”– to go against that which exists within the repetitive banality of our day-to-day existence.

To me this is a critical point. Am I even aware of my Mitzrayim? When Moses comes to tell our ancestors that it is time for them to leave Egypt, to break free from slavery: “...they could not hear him, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.” [Exodus 6:9] The Chasidic masters teach that the darkest depth of enslavement is when we have grown accustomed to it; we then no longer know we are enslaved. Appropriately, this section of our Haggadah concludes with a powerful quote from Harriet Tubman that says: “I could have saved thousands more if I could have convinced them they were slaves.” Our first step toward freedom is, therefore, to know that we are enslaved; enslaved to our routine, to our old stories, to our rigid views. Our second step is to ask Mah Nish’tanah?

[Our story telling begins] with astonishment: “Ma nish’tanah? …How is this night different from other nights?” By astonishment and questioning, we are able to liberate ourselves from the grip of certain habits of thought, convictions, theories, opinions, and prejudices that are held toward self, toward others, and toward the many readily-accepted ways of the world. This question, however, has another dimension. “Mah nish’tanah?” “What has changed?” “What has shifted?” Because the question is even possible, we know that it is our awareness that has shifted. The questioning itself implies awareness. Whatever our enslavement is, our questioning implies that we are now able to step outside of it, and look at it as a “what” – as an object in our consciousness. Our ability to question means that this “what” no longer owns us.

A key aspect of our enslavement is that we have given up questioning. We have settled into our version of reality, of truth, of right and wrong and we have stopped questioning our own assumptions, we have stopped listening to the other side. Our teachers are, therefore, challenging us: “You want to be free? Question everything! Challenge all your truths! Doubt all your certainties!” Judaism itself is, at its core, a tradition of iconoclasts, of revolutionaries, of provocative questioners. So I start my process this year, embracing my lineage, with “Mah Nish’tanah?” What has changed in me? Am I still growing? Am I still evolving? Am I still questioning and challenging the inner status quo?