The Torah of Obligation and the Dance of Reciprocity
Hashem is Chessed and Gevurah.
In a relationship, your partner is both a judge and a lover. Many relationships, however, disintegrate into mutual blame. When it’s all ‘you did this to me, and I did this to you’, marriage becomes two victims meeting each other.
Since Yom Kippur is called ‘the time of our wedding’, I want to explore how we come together with Hashem by using marriage as a model.
When does the judge become the enemy?
In every relationship, there’s a ‘you’re on my side’ trust that allows criticism to take place in a healthy way. When that trust is broken, then the other person, in this case Hashem, becomes the enemy.
Many marriages turn into a marriage of enemies. The Torah is very interested in how God becomes your enemy. For many people throughout Jewish history, pain and suffering is experienced as a fulfilment of the tochacha/rebuke of Israel for disobedience to the Covenant (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28). Pain and suffering become a fulfilment of God’s judgement of us. Especially when the pain and suffering are in the form of suicide bombers and gas chambers, the Jews really start to see God as the enemy.
According to the Midrash, this is exactly what happened at the time of the Tower of Babel - as the tower was built in the basin where all the bodies of the victims of the Flood were collected. The Tower of Babel was built to enable the people to shoot arrows at God, because, after the Flood, they were sure that God was their enemy.
Elul is about maintaining the trust between God and the Jewish people. The metaphor for the breakdown of this is the marriage in which one partner says, ‘you did this to me’, and the other says, ‘well you did that to me’, and they start to judge each other in an exchange of mutual blame.
The question that arises - a question that is addressed by both the Ishbitzer in Mei Hashiloach and the Piacezner in Esh Kodesh - is; if You are my Partner, how can I still look at you as my Lover when You are judging me?
How do people in a relationship see the judge and the lover as the same person, and not lose the trust while the criticism is flowing?
This is Elul.
Reb Shlomo used to say, imagine this. You’re sitting on the subway, and you see your beshert get on the train. You know this is your beshert. You are one hundred percent sure. You reach out, and call out, ‘Hey! What’s your phone number?’ She’s already getting off, and there’s a whole crowd between you and her. ‘What’s your phone number?’ you call, desperately, and you hear, ‘654…’ The rest of the number is drowned in the noise, and she gets off, and she’s lost in the crowd. You are devastated, and so, so desperate to find this woman, your beshert. So you go home, and get in your car, and you drive up and down all the streets in the 654 precinct, looking for her. In the process of this desperate search, you run eighteen red lights. Finally, the police apprehend you, and charge you with traffic violations, and take you to jail. From jail, they bring you into court, to stand in front of the judge, and guess what? Your beshert is the judge!! You’ve found her!
On Tisha b’Av, you see your Beloved across the field, and you go through this whole Elul of judgement, to Rosh Hashanna - the Day of Judgement - and Yom Kippur, until, at Succoth, you see that the Judge is your Beloved.
It is very difficult for the human mind to see the judge and the lover together - especially when the din/judgement comes down in Elul in the form of horrific terrorist attacks.
What is the significance of the custom of asking forgiveness of people in the days preceding Rosh Hashannah? How can we make this work for us?
If I say to you, ‘will you forgive me for all the distortions that I’ve taught you’, how does that make you feel? Do you feel that you need to say a perfunctory ‘yes’?
The way to becoming more comfortable with this, is through the integration of the Judge and the Lover.
We have already learned in the Gemara (Ta’anith 31a) that machol means ‘dancing circle’. So when I say to you, ‘machol li/forgive me’, I’m really saying ‘do you want to dance with me for another year?’
Forgiveness is really a dance of reciprocity. We have to have a way to start over, otherwise the judgements build up. In any relationship, there is an agreement and a reciprocal exchange. What makes a relationship work well is that in the reciprocity, both parties take responsibility. This is what we call ‘ethics’.
Ethics is about making an appropriate match, where people can take their obligations seriously. When the shidduch/match is bad, ethics breaks down. In a non-reciprocal agreement, people are not talking the same language, and everything breaks down.
The Gemara we discussed in the last chapter (Sanhedrin 76) lists five examples of inappropriate matches. All Gemara has diamonds buried in it, and this is one of the most fundamental Gemaras I have ever studied, so it needs to be reviewed over and over.
The first example of an inappropriate match is ‘one who delays in marrying off his daughter’. The Gemara describes this person as an ‘afflicted evil one who is naked and deceptive.’
I translate ani here as ‘afflicted’ rather than ‘poor’, because the picture is one of a tortured evil person. The word arum, which means both ‘naked’ and ‘deceptive’, takes us all the way back to the snake in the Garden of Eden.
The snake is an ani rasha arum/ afflicted evil one who is naked and deceptive.
Studying this Gemara through the interpretations of commentators throughout the ages presents a very interesting picture. The commentators see the father who delays in marrying off his daughter as one who suffers from self-deception. While keeping his daughter at home for his own advantage, he deceives himself about his motives, by saying, ‘Let me keep my mature daughter at home, and through her service to me, I will train her to be a good wife.’ He tells himself and his daughter that he is doing this for her benefit and for the benefit of her future husband, when the truth is that he is the only one who benefits.
The affliction is one of self-deception, and so what we have is a play on the words ani/afflicted and ona, which is a husband’s legal obligation, written into the Ketuba/marriage contract, to sexually satisfy his wife. In an earlier chapter (Tazria) I defined this Mitzvah as having the patience to hold your own self-interest back. This fits perfectly with this picture. My interest as a male is to be satisfied immediately, and if I can hold back, this is called the Mitzvah of ona, which in Hebrew is exactly the same word as ani. This word play is also found at the Pessach Seder where the Matza - lechem oni - is either ‘the bread of my affliction’ or ‘the bread that answers many questions’. The question that it answers is that through the discipline of the Matza, which is the discipline of obligation that comes out of Egypt, I learn how to be a slave. By learning how to be a slave of Pharoah, I can learn how to be a slave of Hashem, and by taking the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven on my shoulders, I become a free person.
The word play on ani as it applies to Matza is also applicable here in the Gemara. The father deceives himself, just as Pharaoh also lied to himself. According to the Midrash, Pharoah told himself, “I can’t persecute the Jews because Joseph was my friend”, to which the Egyptians responded, “well, if you don’t take away their property, we will throw you out.” At this point, Pharaoh said, “Joseph who?”
This, says the Midrash, is why the Torah says “A Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8) It was Pharaoh’s self deception. He did know Joseph, but he was lying to himself.
Along the same lines, in the self deception of the father described in the Gemara, the father is deemed responsible when his daughter goes out and has an illicit affair. The father engineered a bad Shidduch. As the Gemara goes on to say, quoting Parshat Netzavim; Deuteronomy 29:18: He will bless himself in his heart, saying, ‘Peace will be with me. I will go in the chains of my heart, adding the drunk upon the thirsty.’
The main ingredient of this verse is self delusion -‘Peace will be with me’ is a form of self-reassurance that is actually denial and rationalization. The father in the Gemara is telling himself, “I am preparing my daughter to be a good wife,” but the truth is he is adding ‘the drunk upon the thirsty’. The ‘thirsty’ is the daughter, because she is thirsty for sex, and the ‘drunk’ is the father, who can’t give her any sex, and is closed off and drunk on his own self-deception.
The key word here is v’hitbarech/he will bless himself. Instead of getting a blessing from Hashem, or from somebody else, in blessing himself, he is telling himself that he is complete. And so, he goes ‘in the chains of his heart’ in order to put the thirsty with the drunk. This is a wonderfully poetic description of rationalization and self-deception, and the damage it does.
The next example of an inappropriate match given by the Gemara is ‘one who gives advice according to his own way’. The bad shidduch here is with someone who is giving you advice which you think is for your benefit, but is really feeding his own self-interest.
This example takes the case of the father who keeps his grown daughter at home, and generalizes it. If a person has an ulterior motive or an ax to grind, it is not ethical for him to give advice.
The next example is that of a father who marries his pre-pubescent daughter to an older man, or takes a mature wife for his prepubescent son.
The final example, which we discussed in the last chapter, is one who returns a lost item to a non-Jew.
The question is, what do the last three examples add to the first two?
The first case is specific, and the second case is the general rule. The next two cases fill this out, by telling us that any bad shidduch - whether between an older man and a young girl or an older woman and a young boy - is equally inappropriate. Any match between a mature person and a younger child leads to wrongdoing, because the mature person is going to pursue an illicit relationship.
Taking this back to the theme of Elul, this text is telling me that it is incumbent on me to examine the shidduchim that I have with people. Part of me sets up a relationship with you, but another part of me must also stand back and, judging, examine my ethical dance with you.
In Elul, I have to go around to all my important relationships and ritually say, machol li/Forgive me. At the beginning of this chapter we asked, how do I make this more meaningful?
The fifth and last example - that of not returning a lost item to a non-Jew - is the clincher, because this case doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. This really causes problems for the entire commenting public. They really have a hard time with this.
The Ben Ish Chai begins by citing instances in the Gemara where Jews return lost items to non-Jews. Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach found a pearl in a camel pack bought from a non-Jew, and he returned it to him immediately. Another group of rabbis found a bundle of money in a load of wheat bought from the army, and they returned it immediately.
The Ben Ish Chai cites three examples of great rabbis returning lost items to non-Jews, so clearly this Gemara in Sanhedrin cannot mean that a Jew should not return lost items to a non-Jew.
This causes great difficulty among the commentators. What is being said here? This is where the whole crux lies. Last week we discussed the idea that in civil law there is no legal obligation to return a lost item, and there is no obligation to save someone’s life. This has been what could be called ‘universal common law’ from Talmudic times until the present day. The consistency is amazing. In this system, Chessed/Love supplants Gevurah/Law. The expectation is that people will behave ethically without legal obligation, and yet in New York City in a documented case, the rape and murder of a woman was witnessed by eight hundred people, none of whom did anything to prevent the crime.
Most people disagree with me on this issue, calling it an example of Jewish tribalism - Jewish ‘chosen people-ism’ - which has a double standard for behavior with Jews and behavior with non-Jews.
My take on this is that the Torah is saying that the world can only really be improved by this sense of mutual obligation and responsibility. The problem is that this system of mutual obligation and responsibility becomes overloaded, to the point where people feel a need to escape from it. And so we need to find a balance.
The whole transition in Torah from Noach’s utopian approach, to Avraham’s ‘small steps as tests’ approach to God brings us back to this relationship between Judge and Lover.
In the Utopian approach, it all becomes too much, and Noach winds up drinking to escape from the onus of responsibility. The situation becomes so heavy and so laden with guilt that the only antidote is to drink, or disappear into some other escapist behavior.
Noach’s Chessed becomes Gevurah. He is very intolerant and moves to the mountains because he doesn’t like what people are doing. He judges them, and becomes isolated, and then he can’t convince any of them to get on the Ark.
Avraham, on the other hand, is true Chessed. He sees that the whole way Noach applied Gevurah didn’t work. The idea of total solution - getting rid of all the bad people and going off and making a Utopia does not work. He saw that Noach ended up in a very bad place. Everyone rebelled against him. No one got on the boat with him, his son sodomized him, and he ended up drunk to escape reality.
The opposites are two sides of the same coin. For Noach, God is the Rescuer, and also the total Betrayer. For Avraham, God is the Judge and the Tester, and the Lover.
Here we find the most ingenious thing introduced into the Gevurah of obligation and the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. By doing the forgiveness dance, by breaking all our obligations before Rosh Hashannah and again with Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur, we take the pressure off. We say, yes, we have obligations, but in the end we break them all.
In every relationship, I know something is broken. This is why I do Kol Nidre. This is why I say bli neder/without a vow, whenever I make a commitment. I say this because all my commitments are imperfect.
Only God can make a perfect commitment. I can’t make perfect commitments.
This ritual of breaking all our vows is not really understood by most of the people who perform it.
The Torah teaches that the key to liberation and elevation in the world is in taking on a sense of obligation and responsibility. So why do I start the year by breaking all my commitments?
It is a great paradox. But by making it into this dance, by going around and saying, will you forgive me for the imperfections that are in our dance of responsibility and obligation, I can resolve it.
By saying bli neder and by making hatarat Nedarim/release of vows on Erev Rosh Hashanah, and Kol Nidre on Erev Yom Kippur, we find both - the positive and the negative, the thing and the ‘non-thing’ that, according to the Ishbitzer Rebbe, are necessary in order to say the Shema. In order for there to be a dialectic tension between obligation and not-obligation, I must have the reverse, which is the canceling of all my obligations.
It is a totally contradictory paradox, but it is also the key to the whole thing, because when I do this, I can go back, like Avraham did. Avraham was not looking for total solutions. He was not looking for God to make everything okay. With this attitude, instead of seeing God as the solution to my problems and difficulties, I can take the small steps needed to build a sense of obligation and responsibility in the world.
This is where the Judge and the Lover shine through, because the Judge is going to test me in my imperfections.
This is why the Gemara in Ta’anith connects Yom Kippur with Tu b’Av - saying that Yom Kippur and Tu b’Av are the happiest days of the year, because on these days I experience the total forgiveness of the machol/dancing circles.
This is a very complex Torah, but it is also an absolutely fundamental premise, because you have to make the system of obligation work. Noach didn’t make it work. The Gevurah of Noach was so categorical, it absolutely destroyed everything.
Noach’s steps are too large and too global. Instead of dialectic tension, he lives in a world of either/or dichotomy.
Commentators on this Torah of returning lost items to non-Jews all focus on different aspects. The Ben Ish Chai says if the item being returned is money or jewelry or something easy, then it should absolutely be returned. If, however, the return is difficult, for instance, if you see your neighbor’s ox going out of its coral, and its recovery will cost you a lot of time and effort, then you should not do it.
Other commentators have a much more complex response. They suggest, and I concur, that the issue is my own motivation. I have to see that the lost item is part of a shidduch. If I return it only out of goodwill, it will backfire and cause harm. Goodwill gestures can be harmful when they are not part of a reciprocal agreement and the parties are not really talking the same language.
This is why the Halacha says it is okay to return the item for Kiddusat Hashem/sanctification of the name of God, or Darche Shalom/to publicize the ways of peace.
According to Rashi, in this situation, the Jew is the thirsty one and the non-Jew is the drunk. The Jew is thirsty to do the will of God, to take on this yoke, and the non-Jew, not wanting to do this, is drunk.
Christianity rejected the Mitzvot, the laws and the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, preferring to emphasize God’s love. This was an actual, conscious rejection of that yoke.
The Torah’s thesis is that through the reciprocity of returning the lost item, we can raise the ethical playing field to a higher level of interaction than is the common law norm of the world. By doing this through an agreement, which we call a covenantal agreement, we can really improve the world. This can only work, however, because we have a good shidduch. We agree to the reciprocity. You agree to return my wallet, and I agree to return yours. If I act this way towards someone who does not agree to that reciprocity, this will lead to immoral behavior, as in the case of the mature unmarried daughter.
If you are a non-Jew, I cannot give your wallet back to you from a desire to be nice, or as a goodwill gesture. I can’t do it for that reason. I can’t do it because of the Mitzvah of returning lost items, because that Mitzvah is based on a reciprocal playing field. If I do it, I have to do it to sanctify God’s name, and for the ways of peace - meaning that, when I show that the Jews are trustworthy, you will want to join my contract. In this context, I cannot expect reciprocity. I do not delude myself by expecting you to behave ethically in return. If I do delude myself and have these expectations, and they are not fulfilled, I become terribly angry, feeling that you have betrayed me, and that God has betrayed me.
We are witnessing this sense of betrayal today in the release of Palestinians from Israeli jails. When some of these same released Palestinians go on to commit acts of terror, we feel betrayed.
This is why a part of me must always stand back and judge and review the shidduch, asking if it is appropriate, if both parties are really speaking the same language, if there really is a reciprocal agreement.
I must always look at the bigger picture, and evaluate the playing field.
This takes us back to the dancing circle. When I come to you and ask if we have an appropriate agreement that is in a common language between you and me, it puts the whole ritual of asking forgiveness in an entirely different light.
In the Torah of obligation, the world is improved morally by training people to have this sense of responsibility and obligation, part of which is in training people to break all their commitments.
In his commentary on Parshat Ki Thavo (September 1940), the Esh Kodesh quotes the Gemara (Sanhedrin 59b); R. Simen b. Manassia said: “Woe for the loss of a great servant. For had not the serpent been cursed, every Jewish person would have had two valuable serpents, sending one to the north and one to the south to bring him costly gems, precious stones, and pearls.”
The Esh Kodesh asks why the serpent, the source of all evil, needed to fill this role of messenger for Israel. Why could this good not have come from other beasts and animals?
This connects with the beginning of our Gemara, which alludes to the serpent by speaking of ani rasha arum/ afflicted evil one who is naked and deceptive.
The Esh Kodesh goes on to explain that of all the beasts and animals, only the serpent bites and kills gratuitously - neither to satisfy hunger nor even for pleasure. He quotes another Gemara (Peah 5a) in which we learn that the word for venom - lachash - also means ‘whisper’. ‘If Heaven did not whisper in my ear to bite,’ says the snake, ‘I would not bite’.
After being cursed, the snake has become “an instrument of unclothed revelation of judgment” which the Esh Kodesh compares to his persecutors in the Warsaw Ghetto, and which we can compare to the suicide bombers of our times.
“Similarly, when we see that, God forbid, we are being tortured and tormented in ways that are clearly of no benefit or profit to the person torturing us, but simply to cause pain, it is a revelation of naked judgment, unclothed in a natural event - and we can deduce from it that when we return to God and pray, then God will rescue us supernaturally, with a salvation not clothed in natural events.”
In the natural course of events, we would assume that God is our enemy. God is judging us, God is afflicting us, and this feels terrible. I don’t trust God anymore.
If we connect this back to the marriage metaphor, how do I assume that the Judge is on my side, and that the Judge is really doing this out of love for me?
If I am sitting in the Warsaw Ghetto, how can the serpent be my good messenger?
This is how the Rebbe of Piasezna maintains his trust in God, despite the awesome, terrible judgment that is being brought down. This is the terminology he uses. The very gratuitousness of the infliction of pain by the Nazis is the same as that inflicted by the snake, and so he recognizes the Nazis as the snake, and hence that the Nazis must be a direct messenger of God’s love.
Does this test credulity?
I would suggest it doesn’t, because I think it has to happen in every marriage. When your spouse starts to criticize you, and you start criticizing your spouse, how do you maintain the trust and the faith to believe that this is about love and not about judgment?
The dance is fragile. It can collapse into gratuitous criticism and blame. We have to acknowledge that it’s fragile and that it’s based on very delicate reciprocal agreements. It’s based not only on a sense of obligation, but also an ability to say bli neder about every commitment that we make to each other. Every commitment is automatically suspect and vulnerable.
Through this teaching, we are arriving at a global definition of ethical behavior.
This is how it works.
I want the Esh Kodesh on my team.
Why do I want him on my team?
Because I know that even in the worst circumstances, this guy will take responsibility and act with a tight sense of obligation. No matter what happens, he will not sit there and complain and blame. If he was alive today, God willing, if his lips were moving in the grave, I would want him on my team. This is the kind of person I like to work with, because if something goes wrong, he won’t sit back and complain about it, and blame. He is eager to take responsibility.
In the words of the Esh Kodesh, “This is what enables the Jewish person to bolster himself in times of such awesome suffering. The troubles are not clothed in nature, the judgment is not natural, and so also the buttressing of faith is not naturally achieved, because in the natural course of events it would be impossible to understand how to strengthen ourselves. Therefore, this strengthening of our faith works to change judgment to mercy, because it is a revelation beyond anything clothed in natural events...Even though, as hinted at in the verse (Deuteronomy 26:14), I had cause - death and mourning, God protect us - nevertheless I did all that You commanded me. Rashi (Ibid) explains the phrase “I did all that You commanded me” to mean “I was happy, and I made others happy with it.” ”
The Rebbe of Piacezna used this standard as the model for his behavior. When people saw that despite the loss of his entire family is was able to continue and even strengthen his faith, they in turn were strengthened.
This is the meaning of “I was happy, and I made others happy with it.”
This is the model of the covenantal Jew, who is able to see in evil the seeds of Hashem, and to see in the judgment the strengthening of the relationship.
This is not a simple thing to do. Many people who take on such obligations wind up escaping, like Noach did with alcohol, because the pressure becomes too great.
The Esh Kodesh models for us how to make obligation into liberation, by believing in the goodwill that unites God as Judge and God as Lover.
The ideal of the Torah is to bring people with this liberated sense of obligation together, to make good shidduchim. This is the only way to improve the world. When other people see a good shidduch, where a mutual sense of obligation builds trust, then they know that it is good. It cannot be done through goodwill gestures to people who aren’t talking my language. It can only be done through this demonstration of reciprocity.
The basis of improving the world is in finding people who will dance with me in this reciprocity, in a dance where, even if I am on my deathbed, I will return a lost item to you, because you are a Jew, and we signed an agreement together. We have a covenant.
When we demonstrate this, by “being happy and making others happy”, then the world says, ‘Ah, this is good. I want to be part of that.’
This is what it means to be light unto the nations, and in order to do it, we have to overcome a tremendous yetzer hara, which is the inclination to be a victim. The Esh Kodesh religiously refuses to be a victim.
The same faith and goodwill that sustains a marriage, also sustains the relationship with God. Just as I see my wife as a helpmate against me, so I must see God as a helpmate against me. Through this, the snake, which is God’s messenger of judgment and evil, is really a beneficial servant.