Mishpatim – February 23, 2006 –
25 Sh’vat, 5766
The Revelation – according to
the midrashim (oral tradition), the Jews ran away from the Revelation at Sinai.
They were okay with the idea that they had to be holy, but rebelled at the
utterly new thought that their property needed to be holy. Product liability
was unknown in the ancient world.
What was the major Jewish contribution
to the American law system (not including some really great lawyers, right
from our very own community)? The lawsuit—a tremendous innovation – there
was nothing like it for 1,000 years.
½ shekel is collected on
Purim. One-half is a key number, the number of mutual need, incompleteness.
There is room to give, room to receive. One-half is a meditative number.
The first census of the Hebrews
was commanded by G*d. People were not counted (“Don’t count people, make people
count”), but the ½ shekel they each contributed were counted. We are
instructed not to count people. The Nazis counted us many times during the
day. The Warsaw census of 1940 could not have been conducted without the only
four IBM machines in existence, thanks to Hitler’s good friend, Thomas Watson.
In Hebrew, the word “pay” means
“complete.”
Homework: read Job. From Job we
learn the laws of Shiva (mourning).
Why didn’t G*d protect Job, why
didn’t G*d protect the Jews in Auschwitz, from the Satan?
The Aish Kodesh said that we if
honor his book, his lips move in the grave.
Even if we’ve had only ten minutes
of study, we need to ask if it’s a revelation, if we have changed.
The vessel to receive, which is
feminine, is the opposite of a fix-it, which is masculine energy.
Noah was inventive, creative.
He invented the plow, and in doing so changed human history. It allowed for
the cultivation of crops, which gave rise to the development of cities, specialization,
leisure time. Wheat is the poison and the cure. The first separation of the
baby from the mother is when he/she eats wheat cereal. We elevate bread.
What was in front of Moses’s tent?
Moses’s prime job was to teach
the people to be free, not slaves. If he replaced Pharaoh, then they were
not free. When all the people were lined us waiting for his judgments, he
had become their new Pharaoh. Yitro told him, “You’re wrong!” This is difficult
for a Type A personality to hear – I’m doing so much and all I get is criticism!
This was his pain. A big portion of the Torah is about what we do with pain.
Gold – which Moses scorned and which was used to create the Golden Calf—is
what we reach for when we are in fear.
A case can be made for Moses having
created the Golden Calf, rather than Aaron:
1. When Moses scorned the gold
which the other Hebrews were collecting as reparations from the Egyptians
(thus giving the Egyptians a chance to do tchuva), he was not giving the Satan
its due;
2. While the Hebrews were collecting
gold, Moses wrote the holy name of G*d on parchment and used it to raise Joseph’s
bones. That same parchment was used to make the Golden Calf;
3. He had become (he had made
himself) so indispensable to the Israelites that they created the Golden Calf
out of fear when he was late in descending from Har Sinai;
4. He was late descending from
Har Sinai because he really wanted to stay in Shamyim learning from HaShem
rather than returning to lead the Israelites.
Moses took Yitro’s words to heart,
and in delegating the work he had been doing single-handedly, he made room
to receive the Torah.
SHIVA
The main sin of visiting mourners
is diverting a person from his or her pain.
If you can’t feel pain, you’re
like a barren woman. Rachel and Sarah began teaching tchuva from their barrenness.
There’s one problem with pain
that stops all growth: depression. You can die from numbness. On the physical
level, pain alerts us to a dangerous situation; people who don’t feel pain
injure themselves.
The first step in becoming fertile
is feeling pain. A miscarriage is when pain is followed by depression.
***
The main source of Moses’s pain
is his inability to communicate. In his incarnation as Noach, he convinced
not a single person to do tchuva. Moses’s disability was that he was too good.
He was teaching the people how to be compulsive, not how to be free.
Moses asked Aaron, “Are the people
worshiping the Golden Calf as a god?” Aaron answered, “No, you!” The people
wanted Moses to know the answer, and he always knew the right answer. He had
to learn to say, “I don’t know.” As we can see with the Golden Calf, Korech,
the Blasphemer, and Zimri and Cosby, he learned to say “I don’t know.”
It’s not enough just to feel pain.
The biggest enemies of change are guilt and depression.
When you take your pain and make
of it a receiving vessel in your heart, G*d can fill it up.
Crucial for human:
Pain & Joy (Hillel and Shammai)
Good & Evil (Job)
G*d out there and G*d in my soul
Heaven and Earth.
The Torah says don’t resolve the
pain.
The basic law of mourning is fasting,
but there is a fear that the mourner will never eat again, will do harm to
himself/herself. The mourner leads the davening to make the statement that
in spite of his or her pain, I still believe in G*d.
Mordechai taught people to feel
their pain; he taught Esther. The first two letters of his name spells “bitter”
(mara). He said to Esther, “You can’t hide in the palace, you don’t deny your
pain.”
Aaron Cutler started the Lakewood
Yeshiva, which was actually the start of the yeshiva movement. He said to
Henry Morganthal, Franklin Roosevelt’s best friend, “You and your line will
pay if you do nothing to save the Jews of Europe,” words straight from the
Book of Esther. As a result, Morganthal commissioned a study, which revealed
that the State Department collaborated with Hitler to kill European Jewry.
After reading the report, he vomited for an hour. He told President Roosevelt
that if he didn’t do something to save the Jews, he personally would run against
him in the next election. As a result, the War Refugee Board was created,
which saved one million Jews. They hired Raul Wallenberg, who saved Jews in
ways that outrageously defied personal danger.
Esther teaches us to feel simcha
after the pain.
A Jewish woman who voluntarily
has relations with another man is not permitted to go back to her husband.
Esther had to make this decision, to never return to Mordechai. She asks G*d
why has he abandoned her? (Question: who said it first? She said it before
Jesus, but someone said it before she did.) Then she cries out for help, requesting
the Jews to fast and pray for three days. It connects. It’s hard to ask for
help—we sabotage ourselves. The Monday before Purim it is very important to
fast; it is a fast of simcha, a fast to become a receiving vessel for the
Torah.
Our greatest gift is our deficit.
The purpose of the world is to do tchuva. Tchuva is returning a lost spark
to G*d. It made Esther’s face shine. The other candidates for the coveted
position of wife to the drunken wife-killer had to use oils and makeup, but
Esther was radiant without using any cosmetics.
Esther learned from Miriam to
unify the people in exile. Your exile can be your redemption (see last week’s
notes for how the words in Hebrew are similar).
Mistareem and Esther are the same
word, hidden. G*d feels our pain more than we feel it—He/She has to hide it
from the world, so G*d cries in the mistareem, the hidden place.
G*d erased Himself/Herself from
His/Her book. Shavuos is the giving of the Torah; Purim ins the receiving
of the Torah.
Esther hid the paradox in her
heart. Her son, Sirius, rebuilt the Temple. (These two thoughts are connected.)
In the week of shiva, we sit on
the earth. Grieving is an earth process. We take off our shoes to get closer
to the earth.
During shiva, two processes can
occur: numbness/barrenness, and denial.
The definition of exile is G*d
is crying over neglect of Torah study.
Aish Kodesh, page 291.
The number one, aleph, uniting
the paradox. The Aish Kodesh says we can either deny the pain or feel it and
become depressed. He teaches everyone in the Warsaw Ghetto to connect pain
and simcha. The Torah is redemption.
Non-exile is hearing the voice
of the Torah in Hamas (terrorist group), the Nazis. Aleph means “I learn.”
Exile is going without water/Torah
for three days. Torah connects us with heaven and earth; it gives us a home.
The Jews were in Baghdad from
586 BCE (Before the Common Era) to 1950, when 51 were left. Shabbos is the
simcha for the mourner. The mourners had rose water—they stood by the door
to the shul with the rose water, and the congregation smelled it and gave
them a brucha (blessing).
Inviting the community in during
mourning makes us vulnerable.
G*d cries for the person who can’t
study Torah, but does not discount his adversity.
Rashi says you have to make the
laws sweet and delicious to avoid anger. That’s why they book of Jewish law
is called the Shulchan Aruch, the Set Table.
In the story in Aish Kodesh, page
286, R. Jose was num ah cara – you don’t hear the voice of pain – he heard
the gentle cooing of a dove, but when G*d mourns, it’s like a lion roaring.
There’s a spectrum of what we can hear.
Unify pain and simcha to do tchuva.
G*d cries in the mistareem, Esther’s
name. She doesn’t just cry, she cries out to all of the people. You get into
the mistareem by- ?
Standing still and lowering your
defenses.
Freedom is taking responsibility.
If I go in I die
Spiritual death
Physical death.
The
bar mitzvah boy should be lifting the Torah. Making yourself a receiving space
is a lot more than taking- Lifting the Torah is the sign that we’re receiving.
Lifting means I’m ready to receive.
It may be easier to clean for
Pesach or fast on Yom Kippur than to make ourselves vulnerable by putting
on a stupid costume at Purim. Running out of water was a bigger
miracle than parting the Red Sea. ??
What is theft? If you know a Torah and you don’t share it.