Radical Torah

Editor’s note: Welcome to Nati Passow of the Jewish Farm School and Teva Learning center.

Shalom and welcome to a Tu B’Shevat edition of Tikkun Tips, a monthly nugget of eco-Jewish thought from your friends at the Teva Learning Center. Today on nytimes.com the leading headline declared, “Climate Panel Issues Urgent Warning to Curb Gases.” The article describes the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group that operates under the auspices of the United Nations and was chartered in 1988 to provide regular reviews of climate science to governments to inform policy choices.

For the first time in the group’s history, it asserted with 90% certainty that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses from human behavior were the main causes of the global warming trend since 1950. The 20 page summary, released today, warns that the world is already committed to centuries of warming and shifting weather patterns, but that the warming can be substantially stymied by prompt and decisive action that would bring us away from our current patterns of burning coal and oil.

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Towards the end of the parsha this week, God invites Moses to “ascend to God” (Ex 24:1) with Aaron, Nadav, Abihu and the seventy elders of Israel. They did so, and “saw the God of Israel; under His feet there was the very likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity… they beheld God, and they ate and drank” (Ex. 24:10-11).

Much is made of the importance of the “spiritual encounter” these days. In our contemporary Jewish marketplace, a tremendous amount of conversation happens around whether a davvening experieince is “spiritual” enough, meaningful enough, connective enough. Whether with this kind of music or those instruments or that meditation or those chants one can have a truly profound experience of the Divine. And certainly, it seems to be important here: They saw God! God has feet! There’s a sapphire pavement! Duuuuude! That’s so amaaaazing!

And though there’s something to be said for the value and place of mystical experience… is it the point? Are these aesthetic experiences really the goal of the religious life?

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As Rabbi Diane Cohler-Esses notes, the shift from last week’s Torah portion to this week’s can be jarring. "Going from Yitro to Mishpatim we come down the mountain with a real thud," she writes. "Gone are the salacious family stories of Genesis and the dramatic national birth story of Exodus. Starting with this week’s parsha, sitting in synagogue week after week, one can hear yawns all around. What happened to the joy of sheer story?"

And, what’s more, the portion begins with a mishpat — a mitzvah of justice, a commandment concerning itself with righteousness — detailing the obligations of slave ownership. Slave ownership? We’ve just read and relived the story of the Israelites’ transformation from slaves into free and covenanted people, and now we’re kicking off a long set of legal ins and outs with a rule about owning Israelite slaves?

Well, technically it’s a rule about freeing Israelite slaves, though there’s an exception which proves it:

But if the slave declares, "I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free," his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall then remain his slave for life.

Rabi Cohler-Esses is not alone in observing that this first mishpat places the Israelites — and, by extension, us — in a new role. Starting now, the Israelites are responsible for transforming their lives and the lives of those under their care, just as their lives have been transformed. But what to do when someone shies away from transformation?

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At Sinai, when the Holy One gave the Torah to Israel, God manifested marvels upon marvels with God’s voice. How so? When the Holy One spoke, the voice reverberated throughout the world. At first, Israel heard the voice coming to them from the south, so they ran to the south to meet the voice there. It shifted to the north, so they ran to the north. Then it shifted to the east, so they ran to the east; but then it shifted to the west, so they ran west. Next it shifted to heaven. But when they raised their eyes towards heaven, it seemed to rise out of the earth. Hence Israel asked one another, “But wisdom, where shall it be found? And what is the place of understanding?” (Job 28:12)

“And the people perceived the thunderings” (Ex 20:15). Since there was only one voice, why “thunderings” in the plural? Because God’s voice mutated into seven voices, and the seven voices into seventy languages, so that all the nations might hear it. (Exodous Rabba 5:9)

It’s a funny, kind of pathetic image, picturing the Israelites scuttling around like they’re the butt of some Divine prank. Except for the fact that their desperation is evident, and it’s pretty clear that this anxiety is serious business.

The running around, the frantic freneticism of the Israelites in this story reminds me a lot of how we live in America lately.

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Much energy and imagination have been devoted to the question of why the aseret dibrot, the utterances given at Sinai, are followed by the instruction to make altars out of earth or whole stone, not stone which has been cut.

In his commentary on the phrase “an altar of earth,” Rashi writes, “the altar must be attached to the ground; it should not be built on columns or some other foundation.” In other words, the altar — our mode of communication with God, according to the understanding of that time — must be rooted in the earth. God is commanding us to “ground” ourselves. And on the matter of uncut stones, the usual explanation is that metal implements suggest or imply swords, which shorten or curtail life — an action in direct opposition to the enlivening altar. (Well, enlivening for us; not so much for the animals being sacrificed. But we’ll let that go.)

The real point of Exodus 20:22 is how to approach and connect with God. And there’s much to learn here, even (or especially) in this post-sacrificial age.

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The trees are reborn in the depth of winter, and the Kabbalists of Tzfat (Safed) taught that the Tree of Life, God’s own flow of abundance, was also reborn then. They created a Tu B’Shvat Seder to celebrate that time (the full moon of the month of Shvat), which will come this year on January 24-25. Click here for a world of teaching about this festival.

These four teachings are connected with the Four Worlds that the kabbalists saw as the architecture of the universe.

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Tu Bishvat is an appropriate time to explore Judaism’s attitudes toward nature in general and trees specifically. In what appears to be a survey of various interpretations of a puzzling verse from Deuteronomy, Jeffrey Spitzer lays the groundwork for a controversial thesis. The Torah presents a distinction between fruit-bearing and non-fruit-bearing trees. The former must be saved from destruction during wartime, while the latter may be destroyed. This distinction informs many of the different readings that Spitzer unearths, but ultimately, as his final source demonstrates, the distinction is ignored. In war, destruction is indiscriminate.

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Tu Bishvat is, of course, the new year of the trees, the first hint that winter’s blusters are on the wane and that hope–growth, renewal–is already on the way. Though the original importance of the day was more commercial than ecological (it was about the tithing of fruit) the holiday offers a rich set of associations between our relationship to the land, to the trees, to the fruits for which we say a blessing of thanks every time we eat them. The Kabbalists took this further, using the mysteries of seeds and peels and shells as a way to map our inner world and relationships to the Divine.

In honor of Tu Bishvat, I’d like to discuss a little Torah that is, for many people, deeply troubling. The Mishnah in Pirke Avot tells us, “R. Shimon said, A person who is walking along repeating a teaching (of Torah) and interrupts his learning to say, ‘What a beautiful tree,’ ‘What a beautiful field,’ deserves to lose his life.” (Pirke Avot 3:7)

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Oy! The world! Environmental devastation, global warming, George Bush, war, hunger, tyranny. Will it ever end? Where’s the hope?

I was attending a Rainbow Gathering in the Allegheny National Forest in western PA in 1992. It’s a lush, emerald green forest, overflowing with vibrancy and life. Talking with a Forest Ranger whose life was caring for this land, I asked him its history. He told me that back in 1922, the forest was clear cut. And not long after there was a fire. As there was no natural protection remaining, it became scorched earth and was never reseeded by man. Every species and genera of tree, flower, herb, weed and grass that emerged was not previously indigenous the land. After a minute, I was thunderstruck. Now I understood.

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Shirat Ha-Yam is both visually and verbally breathtaking. Some compare it to brickwork, seeing in its shape the patterns of stone on stone that suggest how Torah can be foundational. Others consider it to evoke the ocean crossing, with ragged waves drawing back on both sides and a column of Israelites in the middle.

From the Jerusalem Talmud comes the metaphor that Torah is written in black fire on white fire. Some modern-day midrashists suggest that the text’s missing stories exist for us to extrapolate from the white fire, the spaces between the visible words. If that’s so, then this poem is redolent with untold stories — or maybe the spaces in the text are openings for our own words of praise. Before we get to the white spaces, though, the black text is worth exploring.

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This week is known as Shabbat Shirah, for the great song of the Israelites after they cross the sea. The portion can be split into two parts. The first 58 (of a total of 116 - exactly half!) are concerned with the exodus from Egypt — this focuses upon a world of miracles, God visible and active inthe natural world. The second half is a story which begins with “And Moses led Israel from the Sea of Reeds” which begins three days after the miracle and the Song at Sea. This world is quite different — instead of joy and exultataion at the miracles performed, there is just endless complaining — no water, the water’s too bitter, there’s no bread… and the people even ask, “Is God among us or not?”

The commentator Dr. Yeshayahu Leibowitz notes, “From Beshallach we learn something very great, and that is that miracle and revelation, and even the exaltation of man to sing as a result of the miracle, all of these are but transitory episodes which have no inlfuence on what occurs later. What endures is not the exaltation of life, but rather the prose of life. […] And it is in this prose that the Torah was given to Israel, ‘There he made for them a statute and an ordinance’ and there Shabbat was ordained, this being the central institution of Jewish existence.”

These days in the fads of “spirituality,” in which Madonna wears a red string and drinks Kabbalah water, we would do welll to remember this. Spirituality doens’t come from miracles, nor from any epiphany experiences. It comes from keeping Shabbat, from refraining from work, from spending the week preparing for Shabbat, so that we have a 25 hour day in which we do not write, build, erase, destroy, handle money or travel. In short, we do the work so that we can hand over our existence to God for a short period each week, to trust and hope that we will be renewed through God, as an outcome of our efforts the other six days.

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