How
do people get around interpersonal barriers and still stay connected to each
other?
The more we care about someone, the more power that person has to hurt us, and the more power we have, the more easily we can hurt the people who love us the most. If we are unaware of our own infinite value, if our perception of our holy essence is blocked, we are unable to forgive. We hold onto grudges and, needing someone to blame, we project our hurt feelings onto others.
The
answer lies in pilpul – the art of
give and take. The idea of pilpul –
how to establish give and take with the people in our lives – is a centerpiece
of Jewish education.
One
of the great questions of parenting is how to push away with the left hand and
bring in with the right hand?
A
teacher approaching a student, or a parent approaching a child, requires a
delicate balance between the left hand and the right hand. The secret of this
balancing of gevurah and chessed in our parenting is in the art
of capturing the moment of give and take. This is the process that has carried
the Jewish people, miraculously, through the most daunting challenges. When we
achieve it, we are surpassing and transcending our own personalities by letting
go of grudges and past conditioning and connecting with the holy essence that
allows us to acknowledge ourselves and others.
The
Gemara (Sanhedrin 107b) says: Our Rabbis taught: Let the left hand repulse but
the right hand always invite back.
There
are three critical relationships through which this is accomplished:
¨
Teacher-student
¨
Student-student
(chevruta/peer)
¨
Husband-wife
Aaron’s
sons, Nadav and Avihu, rejected all three opportunities for pilpul.
The striking image of Nadav and Avihu is that they are missing all the give and take – all the pilpul.
¨
They
were the students of Moshe and Aaron, and yet they didn’t consult their
teachers/parents.
¨
They
were chevruta and yet they didn’t
consult each other about what they were doing.
¨
They
were unmarried and childless. Because they had no children to challenge them,
the Midrash says, they “died twice” – they died, and their unborn progeny died.
(Hence the double mention of their deaths in the opening verse of Achrai Mot,
Leviticus 16: 1 “God spoke to Moses
right after the death of Aaron’s two sons, who brought an [unauthorized]
offering before God and died.”)
Their
rejection of the pilpul of marriage connects them with the four who entered the
Pardes (Haggigah 14b). The three who
did not return in peace were all unmarried.
Ben Azzai was a bachelor, Ben Zoma was a widower, and Elisha ben Abuya was divorced.
Like Nadav and Avihu, these three rejected the centrality of pilpul as the antidote to insular reality. Without any give-and-take relationships, they lived and died in sad isolation.
Ironically, Nadav and Avihu are really great heroes, who died because they wanted to come close to Hashem, the God of compassion. (see Leviticus 10:1 “Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, placed fire on it, and then incense, and came close to Hashem”). Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach taught: When Adam and Chava made a mistake, they hid from God. Nadav and Avihu’s great innovation was to take their mistake into the Holy of Holies, and through this, they gave birth to Yom Kippur.
This process of mistakes giving birth to Tshuva is the same as that undertaken by the four great rabbis sitting in B’nei Brak on Seder night. The Talmudic stories about these rabbis show us that their ‘Mitzrayim’ – their narrow places – were in their relationships with each other, and the power of the grudge to kill. The Rabbis exemplified for us how the further one progresses in Torah, the greater the power of hurt feelings. In this context, the Roman persecutions were merely a reflection or outer manifestation of struggles in the Sages’ personal lives.
Just as the deaths of Nadav and Avihu ‘gave birth’ to the laws of Yom Kippur, so the struggles of the Talmudic sages ‘gave birth’ to the Pessach Seder – the model of pilpil.
The
Haggadah is the model of the pilpul –
give and take – between people who care about each other.
Intimacy is about pilpul – give and take. The Seder designed by the Rabbis serves as an affirmation of this vital process of give and take for the Jewish people throughout the millennia. As in the last Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto, the vital ingredient is neither the matza nor the wine, but the questions. Without questions, there is no Seder.
If we are not open to questions, we are not taking risks, no matter how much it feels like we are. Like Nadav and Avihu, we are rejecting the ambiguity of life. The key element of this ambiguity is the give and take with the people with whom we are intimate.
In answer to the question, why, in the Haggadah, did the four Rabbis wait for their students to tell them it was time for the morning prayers, the Piacezna Rebbe explains that an important part of the Seder is not to leave anyone behind. Following the example of Rabbi Akiva, the Rabbis were stopping and waiting for the students to catch up, and not impatiently forging ahead.
One
of the greatest secrets of the Seder is in waiting for those who are at the
lowest level. We
can learn this art from Rabbi Akiva, who also showed us how to struggle with
hurt feelings and how to surpass them. These two teachings are connected, in
that those who cannot surpass their personalities and let go of grudges become
dissociated from themselves and others, and unable to participate.
In any classroom, the teacher’s biggest problem is with the student who doesn’t ask any questions, and with the student who is angry and dissociated from the whole process.
The Haggadah’s answer to these students is to personalize the experience – this is what happened to me when I came out of Egypt, and this is the personal slavery that I am struggling with this year. If it is not taught as a dissociated knowledge, but from personal experience, the story of the exodus becomes a key strategy through with to reach people and connect with them.
The key is in ‘clarifying the shin/shechina’ (often translated as ‘blunting the teeth’) of the rebellious, dissociated child.
The four children mentioned in the Hagaddah represent the four worlds of consciousness through which we all have to move. In this sense, the four children are parts of all of us, and they represent the spirit of the Seder.
Once, at a Seder, Rashi forgot to eat the Afikomen before midnight. When this was pointed out to him, he replied, “It doesn’t matter, I can do it next year.”
Even though it is required to eat the Afikomen before midnight, Rashi forgot, because he was preoccupied with giving chocolate-covered almonds to his grandchildren, to coax them into asking questions. So although he overlooked the Halacha regarding the Afikomen, he was totally inside the spirit of the Seder.
Rashi’s concept of the Seder was taken directly from the Rabbis at B’nei Brak.
If the four children are all parts of ourselves, then the key to the Seder is in overcoming blockage and connecting with ourselves. The Rabbis in B’nei Brak lost track of time because they were preoccupied with the idea of how people lose each other, and because they had suffered most from this, they were best equipped to teach it.
The Seder is a door these Rabbis opened, literally through thousands of years, for generation after generation of Jews.
There is a teaching that says we can tell how much energy went into the creation of a thing by how well it endures, and the Seder is one of the most enduring mitzvahs of Judaism. From this fact alone, we know there is something in and about the Seder and its architects that is very special. The Seder was created by people who were looking deeply into themselves, and into suffering and its causes.
In a profound reflection on the nature and causes of suffering, the Gemara (Berachot 5a) says “If a person sees that troubles have come upon him, let him search his actions” – meaning we must examine our actions to see if there is some level of cause and effect between our actions and our suffering. This is not a crippling guilt. It is a general inventory – a review with peripheral vision - always leaving room for the hand of God in any given situation. This ‘soft review’ is the Binah/intuition that comes from the dark empty space of Malchut, and it is a major source of Teshuvah. Associated with it is the Simcha/joy that comes with appreciation of the fact that God put consequences into the world.
Part of the pilpul – give and take relationship – is in this asking for a self-accounting.
The Gemara goes on to say, “If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute [his troubles] to the neglect of Torah study…If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not fine [this to be the cause], it is evident that these are the chastenings of love, as it is said: ‘For whom the Lord loves, He rebukes.’” [Proverbs 3:12]
According to this, suffering can be a consequence of love. This ‘yesurim shel ahava’ – suffering for the sanctification of God’s name - is a whole category of suffering, described in the Esh Kodesh.
Encouraging a person to undertake self-accounting is a very delicate process. The person asking the question must give full respect to the other’s pain, and not offer pat judgments about suffering being God’s punishment for transgression.
In order to ask such a question, a person must be free of blockage and grudges, and hence able to clearly perceive the essential holiness of others.
Hurt
feelings ferment into grudges, and then people become stuck in them. Giving up
a grudge – capturing the moment of give and take - was Rabbi Akiva’s greatest innovation. The Gemara (Ta’anit) says
that Rabbi Akiva invented the Avinu Malkenu prayer, and could bring rain to the
world not because he was the smartest of all rabbis but because he was ma’avir al midotav (able to transcend
himself – let go of resentments, which are produced by the
reactivity-fermentation process). Rabbi Akiva achieved this by being able to
see past the surface into the holy essence of others, and so he was able to ask
others to undertake a self-accounting.
He
was able to transcend his personality by learning how to be absolutely still,
like Joseph in the pit, while sunk in the pit of his hurt feelings. The pit
into which the brothers threw Joseph was empty of water but full of spiders and
scorpions. Only by remaining absolutely still could Joseph avoid being stung,
and he could do this because he was aware of and in touch with his own holy
essence, his infinite value. His great victory was in not reacting to the
cruelty of his brothers. Instead of reacting, he was able to stay perfectly
still, like the cantor in the cantor’s pit in shul, and daven. Joseph never allowed his hurt feelings to
ferment into a grudge. We also can use this stillness to clarify the shechina
of our rebellious aspects. When we achieve this, we are in touch with our true
selves, and so we can recognize the truth and beauty in others.
When we are unable to do this, we are blocked, which is the definition of tuma.
In this context, tuma is the blocked perception of the pinpoint of light within oneself. When we cannot connect with the light in ourselves, we cannot see the light in others.
We
can more deeply understand this concept of a holy essence trapped within a
klipa/husk of tuma/blockage by visualizing the Hebrew word rasha (the Haggadah’s name for the contrary child).
Our
shechina/holy essence (the letter shin) is trapped within ra’a/evil (the letters resh,
ayin, which as ‘head’ and ‘eye’ are the symbols of reactivity).
The
Rasha, blocked from his holy essence, feels dissociated from the Pessach Seder
and the experience of exodus from Mitzrayim, and so we have to “clarify his
Shechina”, by modeling for him how to identify and include ourselves in the
experience.
If
we don’t know and acknowledge our own value – our own holy essence – we cannot
accept or believe that God would do anything for us. And so we say to the
Rasha, “this is what God did for me”.
This
is where the Rasha, the contrary child of the Hagaddah, connects with the
rebellious child of the Torah. The definition of the rebellious child is one
who rebels against his parents, not against Hashem. The law of the rebellious
child is a teaching about the key grudge that every person holds – the grudge
against parents. Those who cannot overcome and surpass this grudge become stuck
in anger and blame, which is really a profound deprecation of self. This Torah
– teaching through failure – teaches us a lot about parenting, and specifically
how to identify early signs of addiction in a child.
The
process of transcending oneself, modeled by Joseph and Rabbi Akiva, corresponds
with the process of counting the Omer, moving through the 49 gates of Tuma, to
a higher level, where we are ready to receive the Torah. Counting the Omer
exemplifies the idea of ‘positive counting’, clarifying the Shechina, as
opposed to the ‘negative counting’ that was diabolically refined by the Nazis.
There are two ways of counting time. One is counting time in order to kill time – incorporating the concept of the ‘cruel march of time’. This concept includes ‘counting backwards’ – the holding of grudges and a thirst for revenge. In this paradigm, people become trapped in resentment, and trapped in time. People who are stuck in resentment can’t move forwards. The other way of counting time is the liberating, forward-looking counting of the Omer, which leads to the revelation of Torah. This is the attitude represented by the clock of the Seer of Lublin, which counted the minutes towards the arrival of Moshiach. It is this positive counting that works to clarify one’s Shechina – to unblock perception of the holy essence within oneself.
There
are four levels of counting the Omer, corresponding to four meanings of sapar, root of Sephirah. The first is lispor, to count – a pure, simple action
that corresponds to the world of Assiya. The second is lesaper, to tell a story, corresponding to the world of Yetzirah.
The third level is Sapir, meaning
Sapphire or “shining”, corresponding to the world of Beriya. The highest level
is Sphere, representing the Sephirot, which corresponds to the world of
Atzilut.
A mystery surrounds the season of Pessach, which historically is the time of the “blood libel”. While most varieties of anti-Semitism can be traced to real characteristics in the Jewish people, the blood libel has absolutely no grounding in reality. The fact that there is no logic or reason in this accusation indicates that its source is in a level higher than logic. The blood libel is so far removed from reality, it must come from Above.
We have
a saying “Blood is the lifeforce”, and so the Jewish people have many blood
rituals which are a celebration of life – nida,
animal sacrifice, brit milah. Pessach
is the time of many of our blood ceremonies – the Pessach sacrifice, the blood
on the door-post, the brit/circumcision that was a pre-requisite of the Pessach
sacrifice. These Mitzvot indicate the essence of blood, as the essence of life.
Opposed to this is the klippa/husk of
blood – the negative force of blood in Jewish history – the blood libel, which
has been used by both Christians and Muslims as a way of projecting their own
behavior onto others, to cause tremendous fear and death.
The
diametric opposite of Rabbi Akiva’s gift of ma’avir
al midotav – transcending himself – is the act of scapegoating, which is
the shame-blame progression produced by the husk of reactivity. Scapegoating is
the process of finding someone other than oneself to blame for misfortune. It
is based on the assumption that someone else is causing our irritation, which
is an assumption that actually originates in one’s attitude towards oneself.
This is the assumption of the Rasha, who is irritated by the other people at
the Seder.
The
Midrash tells us that the Cohen/priest who took the scapegoat out to the desert
would often be attacked and nearly killed by all the angry people from the
congregation who were venting their anger and frustration on him as he went.
The
Jewish people gave the world the word ‘scapegoat’, and then they became the
model for the victims of the scapegoating process. This is one of the most
profound gifts of Torah made to the world by the Jewish people. Inside the
tragedy of Jewish scapegoating is the hand of God.
Just
as the Talmudic rabbis, through their pain, opened up a portal called the Pessach
Seder, which has endured for thousands of year, so the Jewish people, when they
are scapegoated, open up a portal into the deepest, darkest unconscious of the
entire world.
The
God-given task of the Jewish people is to teach the Torah of hurt feelings and
the goal of surpassing ourselves in order to connect with our holy
essence. Auschwitz was one of the most
powerful lessons in the history of humankind. It forced the world to look
deeply into itself and into the issue of scapegoating.