This piece originally was published as part of Torah From a Mussar Perspective in 5781/2021.
During this pandemic time, I have found myself frequently moving between periods of normal energy and periods of considerable fatigue. I note that the latter is not unexpected, given all that has occurred in our world and in my own life this past year. Yet, I yearn to emerge from this tiredness back to how I was pre-pandemic, knowing, ultimately that I, like all of us, have been forever changed by this experience. I am cognizant of the reality that to skillfully approach the coming months and years will require a new way of understanding ourselves in the world. The desire is ever-present to move forward as if we have not lived through unconscionable loss, upheaval, polarization, and strife. To do so, however, is not to allow ourselves to confront in our own experiences the traumas we have endured this year, hoping that by merely moving forward, all will be made right. This is a deeply human and understandable experience, one with which our ancient ancestors would have surely resonated. How do we move between worlds, between modes of being? How did our ancestors move from the degradation of slavery, through the redemption that came at the splitting of the Yam-Suf,[1] to receiving revelation on Har Sinai?[2] How is a formerly enslaved people supposed to integrate all of these experiences such that their and our enduring covenant with The Divine will lead to us leading lives of holiness?
Our parsha this week, Mishpatim is largely concerned with providing us the beginnings of an answer. We are given laws governing interpersonal disputes, property conflicts and so much more. It is one thing to stand as a collective at Sinai to receive the Torah in all of its richness. That, indeed, is another-worldly experience. It is another to come down the mountain, as it were, and begin to integrate that experience into the messy, complex, challenging reality of what it means to be human.
In Exodus/Shmot 23:1-2, we learn:
“You must not carry false rumors; you shall not join hands with the guilty to act as a malicious witness. You shall neither side with the mighty to do wrong—you shall not give perverse testimony in a dispute so as to pervert it in favor of the mighty.” (JPS Translation).
We are to act truthfully and righteously in all of our interactions, being sure neither to perpetuate false and malicious rumors nor to side with those who act wrongly in service of their own power and prestige. We might understand the Torah’s command in a number of ways. Many of us are experiencing heightened tension with those in our “pods,” given that we have spent many months with just them. In a time, such as ours, when our bandwidth for disagreement and conflict is short, and when our external culture rewards polarization and strife in service of the ego and personal power, it is tempting to opt for falsehood and rumor over truth and messiness. Too many of us lack skillful means for managing emotional upheaval and personal conflict. I imagine that our ancestors who, for so long, lived lives lacking in personal agency, found themselves learning as they went how to establish what we would today call boundaries with others as a means of managing interpersonal conflict as they established themselves as a nation. Our rabbis teach that the Torah is eternally relevant, speaking to each generation in its own way. So, too, does the Torah speak in the language of human beings. Our Mussar practice encourages us to do daily cheshbon hanefesh, soul accounting, as a vehicle for encountering our own soul curriculum and areas for growth.
My teacher, Rabbi David Jaffe of the Inside Out Wisdom and Action Project,[3] which is a space for Jewish social changemakers to engage with Mussar practice as a means of building a deeply rooted spiritual practice to sustain them in their work, teaches often about the middah of savlanut, frequently but imperfectly translated as patience. In our Western cultural context, so consumed by the need for instant gratification, savlanut can feel unattainable. In a society so beset by systems of inequity and structural oppression, savlanut can ring hollow at best and feel deeply alienating at worst. Yet, Rabbi Jaffe reminds me that savlanut is, at its core, the capacity for us to respond with equanimity to conditions that arise which might elicit strong responses such as anger and frustration. Neither of these emotions are negative inherently—indeed, anger can be quite productive—and when accessed and utilized skillfully, can lead to much-needed change. When we find ourselves in conflict with another, be it interpersonally or politically, we can utilize a teaching from the Tomer Devorah, a classic Mussar text written in the Land of Israel in the 16th century. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, its author, notes that the Divine is not separate from us but indeed endures the insults, the trials and tribulations that we do. Nothing is hidden from G-d’s watch. There is not a single moment, Rabbi Cordovero teaches, in which a human being is not sustained by the flow of Divine abundance. When a human being uses this Divine sustaining power to commit a wrongdoing, G-d suffers along with the one who was wronged and bears the inequity of the transgression. Therefore, G-d yearns for human beings, as the Prophet Micah teaches, to do teshuvah.[4] The middah of savlanut, then, allows us to remain hopeful that true teshuvah is possible. Rabbi Cordovero reminds us that we must always keep our goodness flowing to the other, even and especially when we are not sure that the other will do teshuvah.
I readily admit that it can be hard to wrap our hearts around this in a time in which many feel so much wrongdoing is occurring with impunity. Indeed, our Mussar teachers emphasize that free will is bestowed to every human being by the Divine and that we are responsible for our choices and actions. When we find ourselves experiencing conflict with another, we might adopt a kabbalah[5] that derives from this source, a mantra of sorts. Here is an example:
Take your seat. Focus on your meditation anchor, be that the breath, sound, or something else. Call to mind the one with whom you are experiencing conflict. Repeat softly to yourself, “I keep my goodness flowing to you”. Keep repeating this phrase for five minutes or for however long you have. Notice what arises for you, physical sensations, emotions, feelings in the body.
I recommend anchoring your practice in a single interpersonal conflict at first. You might later expand this to send goodness out to those outside of your circle, to the world, etc. This practice is one I have found to be quite centering.
Our Torah reminds us to always act with truthfulness and equanimity. Let us extend that outward, so that as we change our own souls, we might impact those of others in our midst.
FOR FOCUS:
- What is one conflict that I am experiencing presently? When I call that conflict to mind, how does it land with me?
- How does the idea of being sustained by the Divine at all times, even amidst transgression, resonate with me? What might I draw from this idea?
[1] The Sea of Reeds
[2] Mount Sinai
[3] https://www.insideoutwisdomandaction.org/
[4] Return, or repentance.
[5] Mussar practice
Tazria Metsora 5781
Tazria-Metsora 5781
Lauren Tuchman
This week’s parsha, Tazria-Metsora is both incredibly timely and deeply complex. Now that the Kohenim have been ordained, their functions are beginning to be outlined. The Book of Leviticus is arguably the Torah’s most complex and least understood book, given that it is largely concerned with ritual actions and the functions of the priests.
We are introduced this week to one of the central concerns in Leviticus—issues of tuma’ah and taharah. Tuma’ah and tahara are ritual concepts that are not easily translatable. They are most often translated as pure (tahara) and impure (tuma’ah). The connotations of ideas of purity in the English language, combined with how those notions have continued to evolve culturally in deeply harmful, marginalizing ways makes understanding this ancient idea quite difficult. We are introduced to this idea in two distinct ways in our parshiyot—through the ritual process after a woman gives birth, and through the process that occurs if a person or house has contracted Tzara’at, a skin condition inaccurately but all too commonly translated as leprosy. We don’t know what Tzara’at was. Many traditional commentators have taught that a person contracted tzara’at owing to gossip, which lead to a significant conversation about lashon harah, or negative speech. One of the most prominent teachers in this arena was the Chofetz Chaim. In recent years, a discussion in Jewish Feminist circles has arisen around lashon harah and how the traditional ideas of what is considered negative speech are at best incomplete and ought to be open for continued evolution.
Our parshiyot this week also point to the challenges that we have all become intimately familiar with—issues of quarantining, diagnosis, treatment, isolation and reentry. How long does a person who has contracted tzara’at need to remain outside the camp in the Torah’s words? Though the Torah’s language is dry and technical at best, the text is grappling with an issue our world has been facing for the better part of a year, with all of the inequities and challenges present. The priest was, in a sense, the ritual/medical expert, and it was he who determined whether a given individual was infected or had recovered.
For many years reading these parshiyot, I would gloss over the minutia, taking comfort in the spiritual explanations. Tzara’at occurs when we are out of alignment with The Divine, it is a matter of spiritual significance and not necessarily one of physical and tangible stigma. In light of COVID-19 and the trauma we are all holding, those readings ring hollow at best and feel utterly out of touch with the raw human experience of this year at worst. This is yet another example of what I have come to internalize this year—there is just so much of human experience we do not fully understand until we’ve lived it. This is not to say that we shouldn’t always strengthen and stretch our empathy muscles and strive to understand what is beyond our own spheres. What it does mean is that there is a difference between understanding something intellectually and knowing it viscerally. It becomes part of our embodied experiences and lives within us always.
It is easy to read a text like this and feel that it is yet another example of the ways in which the Torah is not aligned with our experiences and lives today. That was then, this is now. The very idea of priests assuming any degree of medical expertise, for example, feels absolutely absurd. Yet, as was mentioned in a recent article on clergy burnout, the spiritual toll of this year is intense, multifaceted and long-term. Today’s rabbis, priests, ministers, cantors and others aren’t making ritual or medical determinations, but are bearing the burdens of conducting multiple funerals a week, holding the needs of traumatized communities all the while their primary and secondary trauma goes unacknowledged and increases, and are making painfully difficult decisions about reopening, capacity and who can enter the sacred sanctuary of the synagogue or other house of worship and for what purpose.
We are not calling out “unclean, unclean!” to our neighborhoods as is noted in the Torah. Yet, we are taking necessary and crucially important safety precautions to ensure that we don’t spread this terrible, deadly virus. And too many of us are not heeding these precautions, which is making the pandemic that much harder to come out of. Some of us are experiencing increasing freedom, able to safely gather. Others have yet to gain access to the vaccine. Some of us are podded with people who hold stricter interpretations of safety than we do. Others of us are struggling to communicate how important, how real this virus is, even after a year of deadly pandemic. We are all faced with the very ancient problem of plague and how to contain and stop it.
Our Torah’s context is quite removed from our contemporary one. Yet, the multifaceted ethical and ritual challenges it presents are utterly contemporaneous with our lived experience. We can take much from this—about what to do, about what not to do, about how to mitigate risk and cause the least amount of harm, and also how to call the tradition into a richer understanding of equity, safety and holiness.