Parashat Ki Teitzei

            Shabbat Shalom. This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki Teitzei, contains more commandments than any other single Torah portion. Many of them have nothing to do with one another, and some of them which seem like they might fall into a similar category are scattered throughout the reading, rather than being grouped together. This section of Deuteronomy is a list of “Because I said so” type rules from God, pouring out of Moses as he remembers each one.

            There are a good handful that may fall within a “fair business practice” category. Rules against exacting interest when giving a loan to your neighbors and friends, rules against using tricky means of falsifying weights and measures, rules about paying employees fair wages and on time, and about being kind in how to treat collateral on a loan. There are rules to let the oxen munch on the grains as it pulls the plow, and rules to allow the destitute come and eat that which is left unplowed. There are also many other unrelated rules in the parasha, so it’s hard to say that there’s any consistent theme, but at least one of the themes of the Torah as a whole, which is shown through these verses, could be said to be a strong work ethic that breeds generosity and fairness.

            Now, many of us in this room have careers that don’t exactly lend themselves to these types of business ethics. We aren’t farmers, many are not storeowners or money lenders, aren’t in a position that pays employees directly, or weighs goods, and so on. But if the teachings of our sacred scriptures are this concerned with how people engaged with one another on small, personal transactions and how people treat their work animals and such, all the more so we can assume the importance of professional ethics in careers that require leadership roles. When we have jobs that extend beyond an “office” and become part of our identities, it is essential to know what our values truly are and live them all the time. I know I feel that way as a clergy person, and I can imagine some of you feel that way about your professions and life choices. One of the final lines of this week’s reading is, “Everyone who deals dishonestly is abhorrent to the Lord.” Whether in business dealings or in community leadership, we are expected to live righteously and deal with those we engage professionally with empathy and honesty. In doing do, we may build a stronger and more trusting community together.

This Shabbat, may we commit to working together in honest dealings, treating each other with respect and generosity. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Shoftim

          Shabbat Shalom. In this week's Torah portion, Parashat Shoftim, Moses continues his message to the People of Israel regarding their commandments. At this point in his prattling on, he's particularly focused on what will happen when they enter the Promised Land. Yet despite its continued lack of narrative, this parasha does stand out among the others in Deuteronomy with some of the best lines in the Torah. You're probably familiar with, "Tzedek tzedek tirdof" - "Justice justice shall you pursue." That's a banger. 

         This portion also says: "When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?" (Deut. 20:19). On this, the great sage Sforno says: "Wanton destruction of such trees is justified only when it is not certain that without such action the war will come to a successful conclusion. The wars of conquest of the Land of Israel, however, the success of which has been guaranteed by G’d, does not fall into this category; it will be won without the need to destroy such trees. Destroying fruit bearing trees in the Land of Israel harms the country. For is a tree of the field equivalent to a human being, capable of defending itself and therefore posing a danger to you? Neither is it able to surrender on account of the siege; seeing that this is so, even though part of its timber could serve as a rampart for helping you to mount an attack against the city itself, since this will not be achieved (directly) by cutting down these trees it is not proper for you to destroy such trees, as opposed to your being permitted to attack human beings in that city opposing you and endangering you." 

          Setting aside for the moment Sforno's justification for actively harming people and conquering cities, the sad reality is that war happens. I would hate to say it is inevitable and I will continue to protest wars as they arise, but the fact remains that they seem to have been cropping up from time to time for all of recorded human history, and we haven't seemed to quite figure out yet how to stop them. Creating a framework for environmentalism even in times of war could be a form of harm reduction. 

         I may have mentioned before, I studied the intersection of conflict and the environment in college. For example, for one research paper during my undergraduate studies, I learned of an effort to make landmines that eventually deactivate themselves and decompose naturally into the ground. As far as I know, they've never been used, and land mines in general may be an outdated weapon, but I think about how many stretches of this earth still have active mines on them, land that is rather unusable for anything else now, and how lack of sustainable agriculture and resource scarcity often contribute to violent conflicts, creating a cycle of tension and mistrust between “competing” groups. I wonder how these "green weapons" could have been of use, or if their existence is mere greenwashing. 

         The verse from this week's Torah portion is the core to the halakhic principle of "Bal Tashchit", a prohibition against wastefulness. From this, a whole slew of Jewish ecological practices have developed over the centuries, from planting trees on Tu BiShevat to reducing meat consumption and supporting "eco-Kashrut". Judaism demands us to take care of the environment, even amidst seemingly more pressing matters. Even when actively engaged in warfare one must consider the ecological effects of a strategic decision and decide if it is necessary or wasteful. 

         We are now in the month of Elul, a preparatory period for the Days of Awe. In my own preparations I have begun working on a Yom Kippur sermon that will also address the urgent concern of our environment. We are truly at a turning point with climate change. The time to act is now if we would like to see a 5790. As we start our process of teshuvah, I urge each of us to reflect on our own sins of wastefulness, and start planning how we will do teshuvah to Mother Earth this coming year, how we can return our climate to what it should be within our lifetimes. 

         May you enjoy the fruits of such labors, and keep cool the shade of your favored trees. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

Parashat Eikev

            Shabbat Shalom! In this week’s Torah portion, we see the continuation of Moses’s final address to the People of Israel, and in this portion, we see some of Moses’s frustration really coming out. Moses relays God’s message that the people will be successful in their conquest of the Holy Land, and then continues on to berate the people for how ungrateful and unfaithful they have been. Moses, in his role as the voice of God, wishes to remind the people of how close to destruction they have been countless times throughout the last forty years and that they have survived because of God’s protection and often because of Moses’s intercession when God wanted to destroy the Chosen People as is promised of their foes.

            On some level, the promises of destruction of the people living in the land of Canaan is extremely disturbing, and even the reminders of close-calls the People of Israel have already survived is a bit unsettling, if we take for granted that Moses really is speaking entirely on behalf of God. The Torah certainly shows us God and Moses often speaking to one another “face-to-face” and we do see the God being quick to anger at the folly of the Am Yisrael, but this parasha, and the vast majority of Deuteronomy is Moses speaking and recapping all that he has learned and experienced these past 40 years. If we understand these words as coming from Moses, the mortal old man, the context is more comprehensible (which is not necessarily to say more condonable). Some of the conversations Moses has had with God may now be muddled in his memory, combined with other, similar memories, obscured by time and trauma, and now as he stands on the precipice of his death, faced with these ungrateful, unfaithful people who will be allowed into the Promised Land that he has led them to but will not get to enter, he gives his speech with some measure of anger, frustration, and perhaps some self-righteous egotism to make up for the credit due him that God and the people deny to him. That is an incredibly human response to the situation, and allows for a more sympathetic reading for our modern sensibilities.

            Toward the end of the Parasha, Moses says, “And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the LORD your God, to walk only in His paths, to love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and soul,” (10:12). The wording here recalled to mind the words of the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O man, what is good, And what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice And to love goodness, And to walk modestly with your God,” (6:8) but the lack of mention to do justice or how to interact with the world kindly was jarring to me, especially given the rest of the parasha that is so full of harsh words about God’s willingness to destroy.

However, considering the timeline, we can look at Micah’s words as a continuation, a more detailed reiteration of his teacher Moses’s words. As medieval Italian commentator Sforno says on this verse in Deuteronomy, “ ‘And Now Israel’ - seeing that this is the situation as of now, it is up to you to try and repair the damage caused by your iniquities from here on in. First and foremost, try and be clear about what it is that the Lord asks of you, expects of you; ‘What does Your God demand of you’ - God does not ask these things because God is in need of them, seeing the whole earth and all of the celestial regions are all belonging to the Divine. ‘Only this: to revere’ - you can do this by simply realizing God’s greatness.”

To walk in the Divine pathway is to pursue justice, to love a higher power is to accept the humility of our humanness and the fact that some things in life are unexplainable and unfair, but to serve the Spirit of the Universe is to embrace that difficult reality and still work to make the world better so that a future generation won’t still be struggling with the sorrows, oppressions, or mistakes of the past. May we all allow ourselves some moments of frustration when we know our work is going underappreciated, and then, may we all go on doing the work anyway, to uplift the Holy One of Blessing by bettering the world left to us, even for those among us we feel may not always deserve it. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Tu B'Av and Shabbat Nachamu

            Shabbat Shalom! Today is Tu B’Av, a Jewish day of love. We don’t know much about the history or traditional observance minor holiday, except that the Mishna tells us that it was celebrated as far back as the Temple era by young women going out dressed in white to dance in the vineyards. In modern Israel it is celebrated similarly to Valentine’s Day in the US, and many Jews in diaspora look to this day for the much need uplift following the Three Weeks of mourning culminating in Tisha B’Av, the day of fasting that occurred just last weekend. Tu B’Av always falls within a week of Shabbat Nachamu, when we read Parashat Ve’etchanan and the first of seven Haftorot of consolation of God’s love for the people of Israel, even in times of sinful behavior and punishing exile.

            Parashat Ve’etchanan , this week’s Torah portion, starts off with Moses telling the people of Israel about his conversation with God regarding his own exile, the prohibition against him entering into the Promised Land with everyone else that made it this far. The word “ve’etchanan” means, “And I pleaded,” as Moses recounts this very humbling moment between himself and God to the people. Yalkut Shimoni, a medieval series of Midrash whose exact author and dates are not certain, imagines that when Moses has this final argument with God, he covers himself in ashes and sackcloth, and sits shiva for his own future. And yet, when God tells him he still has to make his final address to the people and stop throwing a tantrum, he gets up and does so.

            In the second half of this parasha, we find the words, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” The Hasidic masters ask, “How can we be commanded to love, when love is a feeling outside of our control?” Of course, this is a rhetorical question because we are commanded in feelings elsewhere in the Torah as well, but here in particular we are reminded by the Hasidim, as well as by earlier scholars such as Ibn Ezra, that “lev” or “heart” in ancient Jewish texts often as connotations of consciousness rather than feelings. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch connects “lev” meaning heart and mind to the sentence before it, where “shema” means both hear and comprehend, suggesting that if we study Torah, understand the commandments intimately, and use them as guidelines toward a better life and more just future, than we cannot help but show love for God with all our hearts/minds, souls, and might.

            Just a little further down, close to the end of this week’s reading, the Torah tells us that God chose the People of Israel for the covenant, not because of their might, for indeed the Jews have always been small in stature and percentage of the population. Instead, Rashi fills in for us: God formed the covenant with the Chosen people because of the modesty of our ancestors, exemplified in moments such as Moses’s vulnerability in sharing the story of being forbidden from the Holy Land at the top of this portion.

            Sometimes, being in relationship with those you love can get tough. There are arguments between couples, environmental or circumstantial struggles weighing down families, miscommunications, and difficulties understanding how to make things right after hurting someone you love. The confluence of Tu B’av and the Torah and Haftarah of Shabbat Nachamu teaches us that unconditional love takes work and commitment. It takes comprehension and a desire to always be learning more about the life you share with those you love. It will involve moments of anger and needing space from one another, and will require comfort and condolence to stay close in times of trouble. It compels vulnerability and a willingness to see beyond the surface, a bond that is deeper than what others see. May you love and be loved in this way, whether in romance, friendship, or family, that you may embody Divine Love and fill the world with ever greater joy. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.  

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