Thank you for your patience while I've been recovering from an injury over the past 10 days. I am grateful for all of your prayers and supportive wishes.
Please view this little video comment on this week's reading (Vayera, Genesis 18:1 - 22:24) where I explore the intersection between being present for others and healing, in a very personal way!
Shabbat Shalom,
Jonathan
Rabbi Jonathan Blake
Westchester Reform Temple
Scarsdale, New York
Thank you Rabbi for allowing us to see you. Like the new sprouts on your face.. new pearls of wisdom have been shared. What a beautiful lesson to be learned with your words and the words in parashah Vayeira.
ReplyDeleteBe well, be strong, and be persistently patient with mastering the path unknown - like the crutches.
Shavua Tov,
-jaira
Rabbi Blake - I wish you a healthy and quick recovery. I hope, too, the metal put into you will never ever bother you. Unlike you, I have much less faith in medical abilities and intentions.
ReplyDeleteI must tell you, you literally shook me to my feet. You flabbergasted me with your interpretation of the opening Torah verses of parshat Vayeira. I had to replay it twice to be sure I heard you correctly. For, you said, G-d appeared to Abraham, "in the form of wayfearers". Where in the world did you get that interpretation? I'm afraid you missed the whole point.
It was day 3 of Abraham's convalescence, the day it hurts most for an elder who underwent circumcision. G-d came to visit him. Abraham, however, remained despondent, despite G-d's visit, because his innate nature was to provide beneficence and charity. Without the ability to provide favor to mankind, he felt empty. (Every patriarch innately epitomized a certain trait. Abraham had the capacity for unlimited love. Even 3 of the lowliest wayfeareres, Arabs who worshipped the dust of their feet, as in this episode, were treated to 3 tongues from 3 calves, etc. - but only if first and foremost they washed the dust from their feet before anything else.) (Abraham, the monotheist, insisted on this, unlike Lot, who was less insistent on this, for when the Angels came to him, this is NOT the first thing he asks of them.) G-d purposely made this day the hottest - to keep wayfearers indoors, so as not to disturb Abraham during his recovery. But the inability to treat wayfearers hurt Abraham more than his physical pain. He sits at his tent's doorstep, eager to spot a wayfearer and not miss the opportunity for inviting in a guest into his tent. That's when G-d sent 3 angels to pass on by. Two had other tasks to do that day, so in passing they also visited Abraham - to give him a chance to feel good and offer his hospitality. One angel, Gavriel, will later that day destroy Sodom and 4 other municipalities; Another, Rafael, was sent to heal Abraham, and later that day save Lot from Sodom; and a 3rd, Michael, to offer news to Sarah on the birth of a son one year hence.
One of the teachings we learn from this episode, one of many, is that offering hospitality to guests is even greater than greeting divinity, as it were. We see this from where Abraham asks God to "hang on", suspending his meeting with God, so that he can run to take advantage of that one chance he sees in scoring a guest for himself that very hot day. It's all there in Rashi's plain-talk.
You probably fell during the week of Parshat "Lech Lecha". May you therefore be able to stride forth in good health and lead your congregants in ever more a meaningful way. God bless you!
Great post. Energetic healing is like the universal roto-rooter that clears away blockages and debris so that the system can naturally balance and restore itself to harmony
ReplyDeleteHealing Services
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ReplyDeleteInTheVan, you seem to believe there is only one way to study and interpret Torah. That may work for you and some others. But, I find it far too limiting. One ends up with the same predictable interpretations all the time. Our Torah Study group aspires to learning rabbinic interpretations; but, we also find fascinating teachings that derive from academic and personal experiential readings of the text. If I had a vested stake in restricting the degrees of freedom with which we could study, then perhaps I might agree with you. But, I am just a stamm student from Kansas (no lie) looking to learn from our sacred text.
Rabbi Khama bar (Rabbi) Khanina teaches us (Sotah 14a) “You shall walk after the Lord your God” means we should “walk after the attributes of the Kadosh Baruch Hu”. He cites as a key example that “the Holy One Blessed be He visited the sick, for it is written: ‘And the Lord appeared to (was seen by) him (Abraham) by the oaks of Mamre…’ (Gen 18:1), so do you also visit the sick.” God was there for Abraham at Mamre. But, we don’t need Talmud for this. 18:1 is explicit.
The exact relationship between God and these three “men” is unclear. Perhaps, as in other ancient Near Eastern literature, we are to imagine a deity accompanied by two attendants (Berlin/Brettler/Fishbane). Are these “men”, messengers, angels, or what? Is one of them YHWH? Here the language is anashim. Elsewhere, mal’achim, meaning messengers, are often misleadingly translated as angels, from the Septuagint’s Greek word angelos meaning messenger. Did God visit Abraham directly after his circumcision? Is 18:2 the 3rd day after the circumcision? Or, is 18:2 functioning in apposition to 18:1, simply providing additional detail? Bottom line: no man knows for sure; although many people, including you and I, have interpretations and opinions. As far as whether Day 3 is the most painful day when getting circumcised at age 99, I am glad I will never find out. Today, surgeries often employ anesthesia. When it wears off a day or two later, pain can peak. So, maybe today your assertion makes sense. But, in Mamre when Abraham circumcised Ishmael, his man-servants and himself, I doubt he had access to morphine-based anesthetics and I doubt he had oxycodone at his fingertips to ease the pain. You’d have a tough time convincing me that Day 0 wasn’t the pain peak.
In our text, Abraham ran to meet these three “men” as soon as he saw them. Some say he jumped up. Let’s set aside who these “men” were. If the Kadosh Baruch Hu visited Abraham before these three men, why don’t we read of Abraham jumping up to offer hospitality to his most esteemed visitor? You can’t tell me that our Torah would have omitted a visit from God to Ovrom Ovinu. Can it be that Abraham runs to “men”, but denies hospitality to God? We cannot know for sure. But, I maintain that God visited Abraham through these three men—if not directly, then indirectly. These are no average wayfarers. Flabbergastion for some may have just doubled…and we haven’t even made it to the cave facing Mamre yet… :)
As for Rashi describing Abraham telling God to hang on while he greets the three men, you are correct. He does say that in his commentary on 18:3. However, he cites that as one of two possible interpretations. Who is the Gadol Shebahem anyway? Could it be?
By the way, on a slightly different subject, you got to have pity for that poor youth—whether Ishmael, as Rashi would have it, or a servant boy who had to prepare the meat course. He was just circumcised too…
...continued...
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ReplyDeleteRabbi Blake related the teaching from Rabbi Abba bar (Rabbi) Khanina that: “He who visits an invalid takes away a sixtieth of his pain” (Nedarim 39b). My knee jerk reaction was: OK, let’s get 60 WRT congregants lined up and Rabbi Blake will be back in the saddle in a couple days--long before the next Shabbat. As luck would have it, the Talmud is ahead of me with this. Rabbi Abba responded to this idea. Unluckily, I don’t understand it. If any of you does, please share. Otherwise, I’m going to start assembling a list of 60 of us to pay a bikkur to our beloved Rabbi. Fallback, we all sign that way too white cast of his… :)
DavidS
For those of us without ready access to Talmud, here is the relevant text from a 1935-48 Soncino translation of Ned 39b from the Babylonian Talmud. Go to the portion after footnote #20:
ReplyDelete"It was taught: There is no measure for visiting the sick. What is meant by, 'there is no measure for visiting the sick?' R. Joseph thought to explain it: its reward is unlimited. Said Abaye to him: Is there a definite measure of reward for any precept? But we learnt: Be as heedful of a light precept as of a serious one, for thou knowest not the grant of reward for precepts? But Abaye explained it: Even a great person must visit a humble one. Raba said: [One must visit] even a hundred times a day. R. Abba son of R. Hanina said: He who visits an invalid takes away a sixtieth of his pain.20 Said they to him: If so, let sixty people visit him and restore him to health? — He replied: The sixtieth is as the tenth spoken of in the school of Rabbi, and [providing further that] he [the visitor] is of his affinity.21 For it was taught: Rabbi said: A daughter who enjoys maintenance from her brothers' estate receives a tenth of the estate.22 Said they to Rabbi: If so, if a man leaves ten daughters and one son, the latter receives nothing! He replied: The first [to marry] receives a tenth of the estate; the second, a tenth of the residue; the third, a tenth of what remains. [Now, if they all married at the same time], they redivide equally.23"
Source: http://www.halakhah.com/nedarim/nedarim_39.html#PARTb
Thanks in advance for your help.
DavidS
Sorry, I think I just got it. I think the teaching is that each individual visitor alleviates 1/60th of the remaining pain or sickness, much like a limit in calculus. That way the pain never is fully alleviated.
ReplyDeleteBUT, if I follow the final illustration where the children all marry at the same time, they all share equally.
By inference, if 60 WRT members--not one less--descend on our Rabbi Blake at the same time, it should work...right?
DavidS
My friend from Kansas,
ReplyDeleteRegarding anesthesia, it's only some 100 years old. The "day 3 of circumcision" idea is not mine - it's our oral tradition.
You refer to Torah as "sacred", so you believe it is divine, otherwise why its sacrosanct status. If it's divine, then why rely on Greek or recent sources for your information if Jewish sages precede them and far outclass them in prolific Torah literature? Our sages are the medium through which our oral tradition has been channeled, so why use remote sources to gain Torah knowledge?
Tons of oral tradition accompanied us for 3,324 years, so why jump over all of this and fall into recent innovative literature and thereby expect to understand or even appreciate Torah?
Even to understand Torah at its most superficial level (for Torah is infinite in profundity), namely, that of Rashi, seems also to be asking too much of you. Before you turn Torah into something akin to poetry, where what you think is what gives it validity, don't you think it behooves you to 1st understand the text as Moses understood it and passed it on, through the ages, via our sages? Once you have THAT knowledge, and you can appreciate the profundity of THAT Torah and oral tradition, perhaps THEN you'd be a lot more humble before you render interpretive conclusions of your own.
Our entire oral tradition, my friend, Midrash, Gemorah, Mishnah, Shulchan Aruch, etc., is like a spinning top. ALL OF IT spins on one tiny tip. That tiny tip is nothing but the faith we have that Torah and Talmud are perfect. All of it, the entire literature, is based on this one premise (the arguments of Hillel and Shamai, Rava and Abaye included). Were one iota of this entire literature EVER proven wrong, the whole thing would collapse and be worthless! Torah is the glue that kept the Jewish nation together for millennia, despite continual oppression and worldwide dispersion - only because IT IS PERFECT.
One more thing - ONLY THOSE who wish to reform it, only THEY become vulnerable - to becoming lost to the Jewish people! Rabbi Blake, in fact, acknowledged this fact here:
http://wrttorahstudy.blogspot.com/2010/12/vayechi-5771.html#comments
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ReplyDeleteYou look at creative thinking without first mastering the works of all of our sages as arrogant. I look forward to learning what the sages had to say over the years and perhaps from some of your comments on this blog. But, for me, it is the height of arrogance to expect all Jews to think and study in exactly the same ways. What sort of diversity of creation would that have been? Personally, while I think a traditional student must master the works of the sages, it is a huge mistake to make him do so before he is allowed to think for himself. That is why so many traditional scholars seem to have little to add to the study of these sacred texts. Listen to a few online shiurs from rabbis of various traditional groups. So many shiurs are just recapitulations/regurgitations of the thinking of others. There is little new thinking there. If one forces all students to learn in this manner, it should be no surprise that only the 2 or 3 most brilliant of them would be able to rise above the structured thinking of the sages to create new learnings from Torah. That is also true in other fields of study.
Me? I am no rabbinic or academic scholar, much less a brilliant one. I respect all who are. But, I attempt in my own small way to think for myself. Not surprisingly, when I am not too tired, the questions that come to my mind are similar to some of those which occurred to compilers of Jewish thinking before me. But, Rashi doesn’t answer all of our questions. After all, he was just human, albeit a brilliant one. I respect all disciplined thinking. But, I accept little a priori. I try to read as critically as I can. Having said that, I am open to studying with those who place tremendous constraints on the freedom of their thinking…as long as they don’t arrogantly assume they have a monopoly on Jewish reason.
I don’t share your belief in the perfection of our sacred texts. As I mentioned, I believe the divinely revealed texts we are working with are the product of human redactors, and committees of humans to boot. Perhaps therein lies the major source of our disagreements and differences in how we approach the texts. For me, learning is in part a recognition that we all use slightly different systems of argumentation. To only study with homogeneous peers is to lose the opportunity for new creative ways to understand Torah. Scholars often employ different paradigms to try to see data in a new light. I think bringing traditional students together with those without traditional Jewish training, as we are brought together on this blog, can produce interesting learnings to all parties concerned—if we don’t spend all our time on methodological disputes. I am not so filled with hubris to think that I have achieved this level of understanding often. But, study is a struggle; understanding is its goal; and, learning is the fodder that keeps me going.
OK, now you may have a better picture of how I and some others of us approach this study, or not, whether or not you agree with any part of it.
From now on, I propose we focus on Torah and not dwell so much on the methodological differences which derive from differences in our beliefs. Neither of us is slow. I think we know where some of these differences lie by now. Let us rise above them, if we can, and learn from each other. If we can’t, I suspect we need to back away from this open forum.
DavidS
The website didn't take my first posting, so I apologize that you will have to read the above 2nd post after this. DS
ReplyDelete1 of 2:
InTheVan,
I started to write to explain to you where some of my beliefs are positioned in our faith universe, but then I decided this blog is not a True Confessions bulletin board for you and me. Rather, it is a platform for all of us—from all corners of Jewish humanity—to use to respectfully learn from Torah. Recognizing that our beliefs and systems of argumentation differ, we must open ourselves to different ways of thinking. If we are unable to open our hearts and minds to different perspectives, we probably cannot comfortably learn together here. It makes little sense to debate a priori beliefs, unless it is our goal to convert or demean. These latter two objectives have nothing to do with why I am here on the blog. I want to study Torah more than just during our Shabbat in-person study session.
I think I have a fair bit to learn from you and others on this site, regardless of whether our beliefs are fully aligned, or not.
As you observed, for me, Torah is sacred. It is divinely revealed. But, the versions you and I are using are redacted by humankind. All of us have a lot to learn from text study. I am working my way through Torah in Biblical Hebrew for the first time this year, albeit just the triennial portion. It is a wonderful, eye-opening experience. Reading Parashat Bereshit in Hebrew is totally different that reading it in English. I am struggling a bit; but, hopefully I will persevere. For the last 10 or so years, I have employed various English translations, with Everett Fox’s being my favorite. As for Greek, I am sure there is a lot to learn from that language and culture too. The Talmud borrows from the Greek lexicon. Even you do so. I know little Greek. You are the one using Greek, not I. Mal’achim means messengers, or angelos in Greek, from the Septuagint. Angels in English is probably a mistranslation of the Hebrew, taken from the Greek word for messengers. I don’t know why so many Jewish English translations use Angels. It probably is a function of the prevalence of some prominent Christian translations, which have little bearing on my study of Torah. Lamed-Alef-Chaf is the root. Mal’ach means messenger, in this case, God’s messenger—not our conventional American image of an Angel.
As for Rashi, I never committed Rashi script to memory. Thanks to Chabad’s excellent website, I have access to Rashi in both traditional Hebrew script and English. I am no master of Rashi’s commentary. I learn from him as I do from others, without needing to accept his word as “Gospel”. In fact, I think I referred to him twice above—once in clarifying one of your remarks and the second time in referring to his interpretation of Ishmael’s role in welcoming the 3 “men”. I am sure you didn’t mean to be insulting in your criticism of me or the Reform Movement, so I will close my eyes to some of what you wrote.
…continued…
Rabbi Blake, I hope your time on crutches goes quickly and painlessly. When I broke my ankle several years ago, I learned lots of things that I wouldn't have known otherwise, and it sounds like you are similarly finding things to learn from your predicament.
ReplyDeleteDavidS, it is interesting that you bring up angels vs. messengers: I was thinking about this very thing just the other day.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your sincere input, David. I don't know what you mean by my "arguing on methodology". I do sense, however, you often feel fidgety by what I say, because often you threaten to take this blog private. My intention, you know, is not to throw daggers. Torah for me is truth, and that's all I try to explore.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to know where we disagree.
1) You believe Torah is an edited work by man. I think it is a gift from God, and therefore eternal, perfect, never needing revisions, unlike any other book, infinitely layered with meaningfulness - and meant as a guide for all of mankind, both Jew and Gentile.
A corollary of this difference between us is: All incidents stated in Torah is fable or fiction for you; Whereas to me it constitutes both history and guidance. The stories in Torah also have practical application, and this included for mankind in the Written Torah. Most of what is not written therein, and, instead, passed on as Oral Tradition, constitutes the rest of Torah.
Another corollary of this difference: The Oral Tradition is part and parcel of the gift of Torah. For that which Moses wrote and that which Moses explained - both components together make up one whole.
Another corollary is the aspect of holiness attributed to Torah. According to you, Torah is a product of human authorship, so you cannot put complete faith in this book to steer you 100% correctly, for humans are imperfect, make mistakes, and therefore you cannot blindly go along with its demands.
Whereas I believe it is divine, perfect and well serves as my guide even when I do not understand the reason behind the demand; Much like a child listens to his father out of sheer love even though the child does not understand why his father makes the demand.
2) Another difference of viewpoints we have is this: Orthodoxy believes Torah knowledge and intelligence decline with the generations, the further we get from Moses' generation. You believe, on the other hand, many today stand intellectually on par with our sages of the past.
There are manifold, significant ramifications to these two differences. I'll elaborate slightly on this one: Since I take Torah's history as true, I believe Hebrew was the 1st spoken language. And I assume, for Torah tells me so, all other languages derived from Hebrew, albeit in confused ways (read: בבל); Whereas you believe Hebrew is just another language, like any other, not God's language, and not that from which others derived.
By the way, here are some English words that appear to have derived from Hebrew (I reference those I found in Genesis):
cost - קשיטה
33:19
shack - סכה
33:17
money - ממון
suit - סותה
49:11
appease - פייס
(Rashi 33:10)
fertile - פרו
1:22
fruit - פרות
python - פתן
prize - פרס
ram - ראם
furnish - פרנס
paradise - פרדס
(love - לב)
extra - יתרו
serpent - שרף
You also disagree with me because you deem those in whose path I follow as "homogenous", as opposed to the path you take, which you consider spicier. Your "homogeneity" concept confuses me because I see every person as unique, as sure as their faces are unique, and each person adds in his own unique way, despite alliances with either your, or my, premises.
I'll list a few other significant ramifications because of our 2 differences (not giving references).
1) I believe in a Creator that one day I will be accountable to. For you, nobody watches you. You do as you choose; No serious scruples to worry about.
2) The actual holiness of the Land of Israel.
3) The holiness of Jewish people and the interdiction of intermarriage.
4) The certainty of the world-of-truth-to-come.
5) The extra holiness of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
6) The experience of prayer (and every breath) before God Almighty.
7) The world's age.
8) "Global Warming" - God would not create a self-destructive scenario (let alone the pseudo-scientific evidence to dispense with).
God bless you and let's hope to see Rabbi Blake soon enough - dancing!