Rabbi Zeitlin

The power of the internet and the news media has made the tragic massacres of school children in Connecticut, and, to a lesser degree (no less a tragedy, but less a focus of the world media), in China, the world’s issue.

After the shock and the sadness begin wear off, two related questions dominate the conversation.  “How could this have happened?” and “How can we prevent this from repeating in the future?”  Here in the US, it will soon degenerate into a political argument about guns, mainly because that debate is predictably along party lines and even though the election is over, the rancor and discord remain in the air.  (Here I want to compliment President Obama’s very human, honest and non-political first response to this tragic crime.) There will also be a short discussion about mental health management which will lead nowhere.

As a people, we have had more experience with tragedy than any other.  We, in living memory,  saw not 20, not 200, but more than a million Jewish children, equally innocent as these, slaughtered by the Nazis.  And as a people we asked much the same questions.

I don’t think we, 21st century Americans, are any more likely than we, the Jewish People are, to find significant answers to these questions.  Much that happens in this world is far beyond our understanding.  That doesn’t mean we meekly accept horror and injustice, but it does mean that there is no single, obvious and easy answer (see my previous article for thoughts about the limitations of direct action).  Try as it will, the US government will no more be able to prevent recurrences of these massacres than the United Nations have been able to prevent genocide in the post-World War II world.

The challenge of how to respond remains.  Stipulating that there is no single approach, perhaps one helpful insight comes from an often-told story about Rabbi Daniel Goldberger zt”l, one of my most profound teachers, mentors and a dear family friend.  When asked by someone to explain the Holocaust, he replied that while he couldn’t give her any answers as to why God allowed it to occur, he could, and apparently did, cry with her over the tragedy.  It requires a tremendous re-calibrating of our egos to admit to ourselves that our true knowledge is always very limited.  Causes of events, good, bad and neutral, are complex and intertwined, and even if we could, hypothetically, determine a cause with precision, it doesn’t logically follow that we’d thus be empowered to prevent a recurrence–we’d still not be able to control many, if any, of the contributing factors.

Rabbi Shloime Twerski zt”l, writing in Malchut Shlomo about Chanukah, teaches that the way the world is organized at this time, the norm is that Evil overpowers Good.  We’re taught that Chanukah comprises two separate miracles, the oil and the military victory.  Indeed, we need to recognize that in our not-yet-perfect world it truly is a miracle each time things go well, when the virtuous win and when Evil is thwarted.

Our tradition repeatedly warns us to not rely on miraculous Divine Intervention.  However, we’re always encouraged to pray for these miracles.  Our modern, empirical-driven world-view trivializes prayer as superstition, wishful thinking, and as cowardly inaction.  Perhaps during this Chanukah period, when we try to remember that the world is much more than we can observe and measure, we might push back against that dismalism and give simple prayer a chance.

Beyond that, we can reach out in love, starting from the center and moving outward first to our family and loved ones, then to our greater communities, nations and finally to all mankind.  It doesn’t, of course, sound very “practical”, but we continually witness that the “practical”, on it’s own, isn’t very effective.

While anchored to the wick, the flame strains to rise.  If it reaches its goal, it will detach from the wick and will then no longer be what it was.  No one can see what it is becoming.  The miracle is that the light always remains.

From time to time, I help a friend lead a Mussar worksop.  A couple weeks ago we discussed the Middah, personality trait, of the Shevil HaZahav, The Golden Path of Moderation.

The following are some thoughts I presented at that meeting.

Mussar Midot and Mitzvot

Shevil HaZahav (The Golden Path, Moderation)

The laws of Kashrut

The laws of Money

The laws of Sexual Relations

Rather than exploring single mitzvot this month, let’s examine some of the lessons that underlie our relationships with food and money and sex.  All three of these are major focuses in our daily lives and are too-easily abused and can become unhealthy obsessions.  But, when in balance, they’re each necessary for life.

There are many reasons behind the laws of Kashrut.  For example, do you know that one who doesn’t study Torah (code for those who don’t involve themselves in spiritual and altruistic behavior) is forbidden to eat meat?  A deep level of understanding the food restrictions of Kashrut is that they describe the limits of what foods we, with Jewish neshamot (souls), have the spiritual energy and potential to release and elevate.  The only reason we’re granted the privilege to eat the flesh of animals, and only certain animals are accessible to us, is that by our engaging in spiritual pursuits unavailable to the animal we enable it to participate in these same higher activities.  If we’re not doing anything more significant with our lives than merely grazing, we have no right to take that animal’s life.  But our power, no matter how spiritual and holy we might become, is still limited and we can’t access the true energy of most animals.  (It’s merely apologetics and has nothing to do with Jewish tradition to try to explain kashrut through hygiene, etc.).

But, almost as a side-benefit, another important product of observing the laws of Kashrut, especially when raising our children, is to implant the very important concept of “no” into our consciousnesses.  While we are commanded to “eat, be satisfied and to then bless”, we’re simultaneously told that merely satisfying our desires is, in itself, no justification.  We can desire and enjoy, but only within limits.  On top of that, the many laws of preparing meat or the required processes of hand-washing, blessing, eating and then blessing again when sitting to a full meal (or eating bread), along with other perhaps intangible benefits, trains us to moderate our desire for instant gratification.

Money has been problematic throughout much of human history.  In developed societies we can’t live without it, but the pursuit of money to the exclusion of everything else makes it impossible to live at all.  Jewish tradition teaches us that, perhaps, the main function of money, after enabling a sophisticated economy which can develop beyond subsistence farming, is to teach us generosity.  Every Jew, from the richest to the poorest, is commanded to give at least 10% to those less fortunate.  Even one whose only income is from charity must pass ten percent of that down the line.  On the other hand, we’re also prohibited from giving away (in most cases) more than 20%!  We help no one if we impoverish ourselves and then must become a burden to others.

Money is important, but an overemphasis on it too easily leads to greed.  While our tradition accepts that not everyone will have exact financial parity, we also strive for an economy where everyone is able to thrive.  Without money, a way to store value, to temporarily transform the value of our services to others until we can “purchase” the services from others, we would still live in a very primitive way.  A good argument has been made that the very word, “coin”, is derived from the Hebrew word, חן, Chen, which means grace.

But, as with food, our laws dealing with money, both in terms of charity and also our laws concerning business (which mainly aim to create a fair and honest playing field), also are designed to help us grow as individuals, once again leading us to the middle path of moderation.

There is no human drive more compelling than sex, following the same pattern; it most powerfully illustrates and motivates our twin drives of the Yetzer Tov and the Yetzer HaRa, the drive to form/create good or evil.  It’s the mode through which we express our deepest love and through which we bring forth the next generation, upon whom we lavish even more love.  And it also can be our most exploitative, demeaning and selfish activity.  Halacha not only limits our choice of sexual partners (laws of incest), it also limits the times we can engage in sex (family purity).

Our sages were far from prudish.  We’re not only told when to refrain from sex (during menstruation), but also when to engage (especially Shabbat).  We’re commanded, not merely allowed, to have children.  Judaism does not support monasticism.

These laws, as do the laws of kashrut and money, continually condition us to a life of moderation.  Enjoying, but not being controlled by, pleasure.  Generosity for the sake of others and not out of narcissism.  Loving openly and not to control or degrade.  Ultimately, all these have the potential of bringing us closer to the goal of imitating God, creating for the sake of others.

Perhaps, though, the simplest expression of moderation is Hillel’s questions (Avot, 1:14), “If I am not for myself who will be for me?  If I am only for myself what am I?”.

For anything much more complex than, say, driving a nail into a board, direct action, surprisingly, is generally not very effective.  In fact, even for a task this simple, unless you intend to push the nail-head as hard as you can with your thumb, which probably won’t even work (although it will definitely hurt), you’ll soon switch your efforts to making efficient use of a hammer, as well as the lever action you can generate with your arm.  In other words, we quickly learn that the longer path is often the shorter one.

Although many of our Mitzvot, not-so-accurately translated as “commandments” (better seen as actions which bind us ever closer to our Neshama, our spiritual soul-root, to The Creator and to the Jewish people in general) have superficially observable effects, their real power takes place in realms and through modes we can only take on faith.  That doesn’t mean “make-believe” but, rather, since we’re humans, and thus finite beings, our vision and understanding only goes so far.  But our actions really can go far beyond our usual limitations.

Our Torah is much more than the bible, a mere book.  One important way of viewing the Torah is as a manifestation of the Infinite into our finite world.  It is an entity from another dimension, as it were.  An equally enlightening view of the Torah which we glean from our mystical tradition is that it comprises the 613 mitzvot, commandments.  These mitzvot divide into 248 positive ones, representing all the organs and limbs of a human body and 365 prohibitions, related to the nerves, veins, tendons and other internal connectors.  The Mitzvot system is equivalent to a human, אדם, Adam, both as a microcosm, an individual person (עולם קטן, Olam Katan), and the macrocosm of the entire universe (אדם גדול, Adam Gadol).

When there is something we wish to repair or to reinforce in our world, whether it’s something concrete, such as the health of a loved one, or more general and abstract, such as moving the world closer to peace and balance, we have a number of not-necessarily mutually exclusive approaches we can take.  We can and do take direct action, such as administering medicine and other care, engage in politics to promote certain goals, even go so far as to helping people build homes for themselves.  There is another type of direct action which clearly coincides with mitzvot.  A doctor has a Torah mandate to heal.  Tzedaka, charity, is another set of explicit commandments.

But some actions, especially if undertaken with clear and positive intent, and even when they might not seem to have anything at all to do with the desired outcomes, have, potentially, exponentially greater power.  This is because, as we’re taught, our actions, both in the realm of mitzvot, but all other actions as well, primarily work to energize forces in the infinite, holy and divine worlds.  As we reconfigure these lights (even if we’re not able to directly observe them), stimulating some and restricting others, we indirectly contribute to the management of the divine energies which not only operate, but provide the existence of, our world.  Our influence is greatly magnified by our choosing to work with the fundamental energies of the universe rather than to merely make cosmetic changes on the surface.

These ideas seem to too many of us as surprising, foolish, naïve or superstitious and that fact reflects a tragic reality of much of today’s Judaism.  These actually well-known and described concepts are so seldom taught at all, let alone as central to our tradition.  Even much of the orthodox world ignores them, hiding behind a false modesty that they’re “only for the big guys”.  How can we turn our backs on this deep wisdom?

For one thing, they do, indeed, fly in the face of the pure empiricism which dominates our modern world.  What surprises, though, is that even the very frum, charedi world rarely explores that part of our tradition, quarantining those who seek more than a superficial familiarity of the vocabulary.  Although our talmudic tradition should train us to happily navigate a more complex methodology, it, too, often shirks that responsibility.

Which brings us to Channuka.  The revolution against Greco-Syrian military domination was only the visible layer of a much deeper struggle.  Much of our scientific knowledge and technical advances of the last centuries are directly based on empirical study.  But not only our western culture is largely self-restricted to this view of reality, so, unfortunately, is much of the contemporary Jewish world.  It’s not merely a matter of assimilation, although most of the liberal Jewish world tends to rely on “scientific” literary criticism, politically-correct “historical” studies and the like rather than on traditional sources as viewpoints.  However, to a large degree the recent (last 150 years or so) fossilization of the orthodox halachic process also derives from seeing Talmud and Halacha as linear.

A unique contribution of Judaism, although it is ever-more-frequently either unknown or ignored, is that we are mandated to successfully navigate both the linear and the associate, the empirical and the intuitive.  This derives from our Oral Torah, the ever-developing and unfolding of the infinite layers of meaning embedded in the finite Written Torah.  Our tradition often equates the Torah with The Creator.  The intent of this isn’t to scare us into blind obedience but to constantly remind us that just as God has infinite facets, so does the Torah.  As I often emphasize, Judaism has no place for “one-size-fits-all” halacha or opinions!

Although we can and do derive practical ritual, ethical and legal decisions from the Talmud, in a way that’s just a secondary benefit of Torah study.  The real purpose is to act as a “gymnasium” (substituting a Jewish worldview over the Greek one) for the soul/mind, a set of mental exercises to teach us how to thrive by straddling both worlds.  We learn how to analyze situations through multiple simultaneous parameters–techniques that are only recently being developed on the frontiers of mathematics and other sciences as they, themselves, confront the need to transcend the empirical.

Chanukah is both an opportunity and a mandate to, once again, rededicate ourselves to breaking our limitations, to elevate “outside the box” thinking as at least co-equal with logical analysis.

After the Chanukia, the nine-armed candelabra, lighting of which is the totality of our mitzvah observance, the most familiar symbol of the holiday is the dreidel, a four-faced top with which we play a simple game.  Our tradition is an intentional one, full of symbolism and lessons.  When we play dreidel, our holding it by its stem from the top is not coincidental.  Rather, it symbolizes that the miracle of Chanukah was one that was initiated from the top down.  As opposed to its “sister” holiday, Purim, whose toy is the gragor (noise-maker) which we grasp from the bottom, and where we, in fact, initiated our miraculous salvation through fasting, mourning and other modes of active Tshuva (repentance), we didn’t collectively call upon God to save us.  Rather, a small group of people, the Maccabees, were inspired from above to take up arms for the unlikely defeat of the Greco-Syrians who had overrun our country, occupied our holy Temple and who brutally attempted to force their world-view upon us.

With help from the Almighty we were able to recover our independence and our right to our own values and traditions.  To mark this remarkable and highly unlikely military miracle, we were graced with an additional miracle of one day’s oil providing constant light a full eight days until new, purified oil was available.  In fact, the holiday is often referred to as the Holiday of Lights.

We’re taught that the light from the pure and sanctified oil produced a light of such great clarity as was unseen in any other context.  As we know, pure white light is, in fact, the product of all the various wavelengths of color.  Like the Torah, although it can appear to be simple and linear, it is, in fact, infinitely complex.

We often tend to take comfort in the simple.  Complexity all too often frightens rather than challenges us.  It’s so easy to retreat to an easier way of seeing things.  It also appeals to our narcissistic selves because it feeds the illusion that we can actually understand all there is.  Each Chanukah can seem a great struggle to just sit quietly and gaze at the lights, to remind ourselves that no matter how much we might come to know, there will always be infinitely more that we never will.  Our physical eyes are only enabled to perceive a tiny fraction of the light that our spiritual eyes tell us is really radiating from our narot, candles.  The struggle for freedom from our self-imposed boundaries is one we need to periodically renew.  All the frequencies of the light are truly there for us.

חג אורים שמח, Chag Orim Sameach.

A catalyst is a necessary ingredient which creates, or at least facilitates, a reaction but which might not even be detected in the final product.  In many ways, Yitzchak represents this essential function.  Of the אבות, Avot, Patriarchs, he is by far the most hidden, the most silent.  Characterized as an עולה, Olah, which translates either as a burnt offering, recalling his being bound as a sacrifice by his father, or, even more literally, as something that goes up, he is the focus, perhaps even mechanism, of his father, Avraham’s, incorporation of יראה, Yirah, fear/awe into his personality.

Indeed, in our mystical tradition Avraham represents חסד, Chesed, unbounded love and energy, while Yitzchak represents גבורה/דין/יראה, Gevurah/Din/Yirah, strength/judgement/awe.  Neither of them, however, was yet able to father the nation, i.e. the twelve tribes.  That quality didn’t evolve until Yaakov, the projection of Avraham’s Chesed though the lens of Yitzchak’s Gevurah, who represents תפארת, Tiferet, beauty/balance comes on the scene.

Unbridled passion, as much as we desire to experience it, is quick to burn out and usually leaves very little that’s memorable in its wake.  Likewise, excessive dogmatic strictness, while certainly unpleasant to experience, usually creates nothing by itself and certainly leaves no positive legacy.  Complexity theory discusses the very narrow bandwidth between the limits of entropy and enthalpy, strangling structure and chaos, in which life is able to thrive.

Among the many lessons we can draw from Yitzchak, we can begin to understand and appreciate the function of a selfless lens.  Without a focus, the great light of Chesed might  easily become trivialized to mere fireworks.  If, however, it’s focused and directed (by Gevura), the potential for beauty, Tiferet, is finally created, even if that lens itself is barely, if at all, present in this final product (which, according to our tradition is the central Sefira, energy center, which then powers the entire system).

This theme is mirrored throughout the telling of Yitzchak’s story.  Not only is he the most silent of the Avot, the daily prayer that he instituted, Mincha, for the afternoon, is significantly shorter than Avraham’s, Shacharit/morning, which is the longest, or Ma’ariv, the evening prayer founded by Yaakov.

Gevurah is also the energy of צמצום, Tzimtzum, the self-contraction, as it were of God, creating a space for Creation to exist.  One of the results of this Tzimtzum is that by withdrawing, God’s presence becomes harder to find in our world.  Much like Yitzchak, whose function and contribution is critical, but whose presence and personality seems most withdrawn.

One lesson to draw from this is that our real contributions to the world won’t necessarily carry our name nor create our fame.  Nonetheless, discovering ourselves and our unique potentials in this world, and then going out to fulfill them, is not only critical, but each of us is also the unique agent, the unique catalyst/provider for that function.

We learn (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5) that whoever saves even one soul has actually sustained the entire universe.  That includes “saving” oneself, i.e. enabling ourselves to fulfill critical function that the entire universe requires and that only we, in our unique selves, can perform.  Almost all of us will, almost all the time, do that in relative anonymity, but that doesn’t diminish our contribution.

Rabbi Twerski zt”l, in his book Malchut Shlomo, writes a very short piece for Parshat Noah.  He quotes the very beginning of the parsha, …אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ נֹחַ, “These are the generations of Noah, Noah…”and teaches that Noah was himself his own “generation” or result.  In other words, Noah made himself into the Zaddik he is later described to be.

The insight here is that one requirement to becoming a Zaddik, a truly holy and saintly person, is to mature and evolve yourself into this highest level of being.  While we each have the innate ability to become a Zaddik, it won’t be bestowed on us.  Rather, it is something to strive for, and the way we strive for it is only by working, tirelessly if necessary, on ourselves.

This is really the message of the entire Torah and the purpose of the entire mitzva (commandment) system.  We, and the world, are created intentionally imperfect and the power as well as the responsibility to refine and perfect ourselves is handed to each of us.  Even if we’re not completely righteous and holy, as the commentators point out about Noah, we are capable of raising ourselves to the highest degree.

Yom Kippur is the climax of Tshuva, returning.

The guiding principle in this period of time is that even though the subtleties of the process are infinitely beyond our comprehension, somehow we are each invited, as unique individuals, to restore our inner balance, to re-center ourself in our unique personalities.  In a very real way, although we’ve been conditioned through our culture’s single-minded devotion to empiricism, to ignore or deny it, ethereal as it may be, each of us is invited for a “do-over”, a new beginning.  No, we’re not restored to ourselves as innocent babies–everything that we have experienced up to now is definitely a part of who we are and the world we inhabit–but even with all the changes we’ve experienced since this time last year, just like last year we can start the process of moral decision with a clean slate–whatever affects our past actions have had, they no longer pre-determine that we’ll err once again.  Somehow, without having any deep understanding of how it is occurring, it’s as if our current momentum and conditioning are, at least temporarily, suspended and we can make decisions based on what’s the right thing to do rather than which choice fulfills one agenda or another.  The reality is contained in the word “repentance”, re pendere, to be suspended, once again, perfectly balanced in the center between good and evil.

Like all special opportunities, this is a “limited-time offer!”  It won’t last forever.  Once we begin a new series of choices and actions we start to build a new momentum which will affect all of our choices from now on.  And while we can rely that Yom Kippur will return, with all its opportunities, next year and the next, as individuals we don’t know if we will.

Of course, the unspoken question is whether all this is true or if it’s just part of soothing myths we tell each other in order to survive this world.  And even if there is such a thing as Tshuva, is it really open to me?  Haven’t my past actions, my doubts or even total lack of faith, removed me from this process?

These aren’t easy questions.  Those of us who attempt to engage with the world in its current state (and if you’re a believer, then you realize that God has directed it here and that we’re not living in a random and arbitrary confluence of unrelated factors), while still allowing ourselves to remain attached to our tradition and it’s wisdom and insights, have to reconcile the empirical world in which we’re immersed with the intuitive, transcendental reality we also experience.  Like anything beyond the trivial, this can’t be solved solely as an intellectual puzzle.  We take a number of measures, none of them with any logical basis, to undergo this procedure of Tshuva.  On Yom Kippur we fast, denying ourselves even water.  We refrain from bathing, sexual relations, worrying about physical discomfort and, somehow, we do experience the renewal.  We end the day feeling clear-headed, directed and dedicated.  Even though it probably won’t last very long, it seems like we have a do-able plan for the future.

Even those of us who enthusiastically try to participate in this process often wonder if our secret deeds, the ones we’re ashamed to confront, and we all have them, disqualify us from Tshuva.  In many ways, this is an opening in combatting despair.  In our darkest moments, we all feel inadequate, unfit and undeserving, but while this might be the reality of our feelings, it’s not a very objective one.

The Gemara, in Chagiga, deals directly with this issue in the story of Rabbi Elisha Ben Abahu.  One of Rabbi Akiva‘s greatest students, he is one of only three who, along with Rabbi Akiva (making up the fourth), ascends to פרדס, Pardes, or Paradise (actually, this is an acronym for the four levels of meaning in the Torah,  פשט, Pshat or simple meaning, רמז, Remez or hint, דרש, Drash or homiletic meaning and סוד, Sod, or secret/mystical meaning.  In other words, he was privileged to explore the deepest levels of reality.

Of these four great rabbis, only Rabbi Akiva comes to a good end, “entering in peace, leaving in peace”.  One of the others died from the experience and another went mad.  Elisha, it says, “cut his roots” which, is taken to mean he completely loses his faith and becomes an apostate.  He hears a heavenly voice, which is repeated several times, telling him that of all people, only he is excluded from Tshuva!  Without further exploration, he falls into a despair from which he doesn’t emerge.

Our sages are, understandably, worried about this conclusion.  We’re taught that everyone person, no matter how many evil deeds they’ve done in their lives, is eagerly awaited to do Tshuva, even just a moment before their death.  How is it possible that a brilliant scholar, one so sensitive as to be chosen to accompany Rabbi Akiva, a person with many mitzvot and good deeds to his name, who has acquired a tremendous amount of Torah knowledge, be denied?  Not only that, but how could he even think that might be the case?  Shouldn’t his earlier training and all his experience lead him to reject this despair?

We’re not told exactly why, but we understand that people generally hear what they are listening for.  Somehow in his experiences, Elisha became so alienated from himself and from his people that he only heard what he wanted to.  It wasn’t that he was barred from Tshuva, but, rather, he’d entered a situation where it was going to be a lot more difficult for him to successfully achieve it.  He would have to overcome his own doubts not only about how the world really is, but who he really is.

Rabbi Daniel Goldberger, zt”l, warned me many years ago when I first spoke with him about becoming a rabbi, that he never indulged himself in 100% certainty.  On the one hand, that’s a sincere expression of the humility that comes from realizing that we are finite beings without omniscience.  Additionally, I believe, it’s a formula to avoid such severe disappointment that you fall into despair.  If you accept that your world-view might be completely wrong, it’s not so devastating for it to be disproved.  Perhaps with too inflexible an understanding, even if based on much study, he was incapable of accepting the world as it is and himself as he is.  His own inflexibility, and not a Divine Decree, prevents him from Tshuva.

If we’re able to, somehow, free ourselves from our preconceptions, from limiting the universe to our own imaginations, we’ll maintain the realization that there is always room to return, to re-center, to re-calibrate.  And we’ll also know that when we come to this time next year we’ll have many temporary conclusions we’d reached over the year which are wrong.  Which we’ll have to re-calibrate again.  And we’ll celebrate our humanness along with our Creator.

G’mar Chatima Tova

The themes of Sin and Repentance predominate, beginning tomorrow evening and extending for Ten Days of Repentance through Yom Kippur when we chant together, אשמנו, בגדנו, Ahamnu, Bagadnu, We have become guilty, We have betrayed….  This always brings up the questions of the purpose of sin in God’s plan as well as its inevitability.

Strangely, the purpose of sin is much easier to understand, in that it motivates us to not only self-correct the damage we caused through it, but also to be inspired to grow beyond the desire of that particular sin, hopefully leading us to better habits and decisions.  I’m more interested in whether or not it is inevitable that each of us will, at some point, sin.

Out tradition is very honest about our ancestors and leaders.  As we learn about them through the Torah, we witness each of them making mistakes, falling short, committing sins.  In fact, the heritage of sinning is as old as humanity itself, involving the very first couple.

Judaism has a unique take on this First Sin, quite different than the concept of Original Sin.  It’s very important to keep in mind.  Just like any other phenomenon in our God-Created world, even though it presents quite negatively, ultimately it is for our benefit.

If that is a hard-to-understand concept, here’s an even more challenging one I propose:  that first sin generated the adventure of all subsequent human endeavor.  We’re taught that had Adam and Chava merely resisted violating their only negative commandment, they would have entered Shabbat in full glory and holiness and Reality would have gone directly to it’s final, perfect configuration.  Instead, we were sent out into the world and history begins.

A second consequence of this sin is that Death was introduced.  While it’s possible to feel enthusiasm for all we have achieved and experienced since Eden, it’s much more difficult to find a positive value in Death.  Nonetheless, our tradition teaches us that everything that God has created has been created for good.  We often need to explore deep below the surface.

The Ramchal explains the consequences of Adam’s sin were the simultaneous weakening of our souls as well as the greater opaqueness and physicality of our bodies.  As we were originally configured, it wasn’t supposed to be so massively challenging to succeed in our partnering with God to complete and perfect Creation.  We “merely” had to apply our almost infinitely powerful Neshama, soul, to the final polishing of our material, but (at the time) much more ethereal, bodies.  But the task became so formidable as we became so much more tied to our materiality and so much less reliant on our spiritual connection with the Infinite that we now need to undergo a process of physical deterioration and rebuilding, while our soul is allotted an opportunity to recharge and return to its full strength, in order to try once again to bring the world to it’s destined perfection.  In other words, our tradition teaches us that death is an inevitable part of life.

As we prepare to contemplate, “Who will live and who will die?”, we read in the Torah of Moshe’s final day.  Running out of time, he tries to fill us will all his knowledge and wisdom, knowing that it will not be sufficient.  As the Torah reaches the end of its scroll, only to begin again in several weeks, Moshe prepares Yehoshua to lead the next phase.

Just a couple weeks ago, with Parshat V’Etchanan, we learn that Moshe pleaded with God to enter the Promised Land of Israel and to fulfill his mission by returning the Jewish People to our home.  Our sages tell us that he prayed over and over, 515 times, until God told him to stop because, if he asked even one more time God would be obliged to grant his prayer.  I don’t know about you, but if I were told that I could realize my life’s dream by only asking one more time, I wouldn’t read that as a message telling me that the right choice would be to stop.  But that’s exactly what Moshe did and he’s praised for it.

We’re taught that Moshe realized that if he were to pray that one more time, he would indeed bring the Jewish People into The Land of Israel.  He would be transformed into Mashiach and the world would enter it’s permanent, final perfection.  But Moshe realized at this last minute that there are perfections and there are perfections, and the perfection the universe would have been transformed to would be inferior to a higher order of perfection that was still possible to reach.  There is more that Humanity and The Jewish People can still achieve in order to prepare this ultimate and eternal perfection and to make it the highest order of perfection possible.  This echoes, perhaps, the situation in Eden.  Of course, the world would have become eternally “perfect”, but at a lower order of perfection than if we continued to strive to lay a better and stronger background.

We know, both instinctively and socially, that death is evil.  All living things avoid pain and move towards light.  A dead human body is the paradigm of Tum’a, spiritual pollution and defilement, and even dead insects are able to transmit tum’a.  On the other hand, it is often this race against time that motivates us to live and love and create the best we can.  As I get older, the urgency to write all my insights, to play all my music, to present all of my visual wonder grows.  As I cope with having limited, ultimately inadequate, time for so much to do, I confront the reality that I will never achieve everything I hope to.

Our tradition teaches us something very special here, as it reminds us in the tractate of Avot, The Fathers (2:21), that while it won’t be our lot to finish the job we’re not absolved from working on it.  Death is the great reminder that no matter what we achieve, no matter how much we learn, we are always finite.  Adam, the primordial man, Moshe, the embodiment of wisdom were each limited beings.  Even if, as we’re taught, Adam’s soul contained all the souls of future humanity, just as Moshe’s neshama contains the root of all 600,000 Jewish neshamot, as finite humans neither was adequate, or was supposed to be adequate, to bring שלמות, Shleymut, Ultimate Perfection, to Creation.  Rather, humanity had to develop through the experience of history, with each soul assigned a unique and essential role.  The next generation awaits its challenges and opportunities that only they can accomplish.

Yes, we look forward to a day, במהרה בימינו, may it be soon in our days, that we’ve finished our collective task of rectifying and completing Creation, but in order for each of us to best fulfill our unique task we need the humility to truly see ourselves as flawed, limited yet still with infinite capacity.

May our sins bring us to returning, may our mortality bring us humility as well as motivation.