ADAR BET TORAH
The four parshiot in this month have us parked at Mount Sinai where we have built a mishkan. We stay and receive laws all throughout the book of Leviticus, which starts this month. Pekudei is the last parsha of Exodus and the last parsha concerning the building of the mishkan. Then we enter Leviticus and receive core concepts of Israelite religion as it was expressed once the Jerusalemite priesthood and scribes became the chief religious forces first in the United Kingdom and then in the Southern Kingdom of Judah once the North and South split apart after the death of Solomon.
As usual, I’m going to discuss four themes.
· The contrast between the emptyhandedness of human protagonists in encountering the divine compared to the fullness of shlepping the mishkan around. (Pekudei)
· The terms used for the person doing the offering. (Vayikrah)
· The seven days of initiation the would be priests undergo. (Tzav)
· The stage of reincorporation in a rite of passage and the danger associated with it. (Shemini)
The protagonists who have had visions of the divine, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, (sorry, all males) have been strikingly emptyhanded. Abraham lived a semi nomadic life, Jacob encountered the divine twice, once when fleeing his home after fleecing (pun intended) Esau of his birthright and having nothing, and once when he was alone at the ford of the river Jabbok. Joseph does his dream interpretations when he is a prisoner and Moses in his encounter at the burning bush does not even have sandals after the divine tells him to take them off. Moses also encounters the divine during a vision fast where he didn’t even have food or water. The same is true for Elijah, Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov if we look at the vision fast material I presented a few weeks ago in Ki Tissa. They all are empty handed.
The people are no longer empty handed once they have the mishkan. They have the mishkan itself, and all the sacrifices therein require significant material contributions. No one ever went up to the Temple in Jerusalem and proclaimed, as Jacob did, that YHVH was in this place and I did not know. (Genesis 28:16). In the mishkan, as in the temple, not only is YHVH in the house, it is his house. This fact is trumpeted by the Levites who sing Psalms as the people enter the Temple. We have here a different kind of relationship with the divine.
When we are full, it is surely hard to hear the divine. This isn’t to justify poverty which is the imposition of emptiness on others so some people can have hands that are too full. We live in a world that is noisy and busy, in which most of us strive to have our hands be too full. This is to observe that the spirituality of the mishkan, the temple, the sacrifices is a very, very different kind of spirituality than the solo encounter with the divine with nothing much more than the clothes on your back and a water flask.
There is a difference between the empty handed spirituality of the wilderness and the settled spirituality of the village, at least it seems to me. It’s really tough to live on the mountain top or the cave; most of us return to our village and then what?
How do you think of the difference between empty handed spirituality and the spirituality of a settled people whose hands are full enough? How do you integrate these two manifestations of spirituality? To what extent does the mishkan feel like an integration that works?
The terms used for the person doing the offering are, in order, “earthling”, (adam) “ensouled person” (nefesh) and “man” (ish). These three terms, I suggest, offer us a vision of human wholeness. This is the wholeness that sacrifice seeks to repair through olah (burnt) or hattat (sin) offerings. This is the wholeness that sacrifice seeks to embody in shlamim (well being) offerings.
“Speak to the children of Israel. And you shall say to them: a human from you who will make an offering to YHVH—you shall make your offering from the domestic animals, from the herd and from the flock.” (1:2). The word for human is adam, from the same root as the word for soil, adamah, and my preferred translation is “earthling”. “And a person (nefesh) who will make an offering” (2:1). Nefesh is a common term for one of the levels of the soul, which is why I have offered the translation of “ensouled person.” “And the priest who brings forward a man’s (ish) burnt offering.” (7:8). Ish is a male human
Friedman points out that that Leviticus offers us the same three words for human in the same order as Genesis does. Here it is adam (1:2), then nefesh (2:1) and ish (7:8). For Genesis, it is adam 1:26, nefesh 2:7 and ish 2:23. I agree it links the two books. What are the implications of that?
Sacrifice, the linkage suggests, is a kind of second creation or recreation of the human being. Further, the linkage suggests a tight connection amongst the earth, the divine through the soul and the human community. Wholeness then is what happens when these three factors are rightly aligned.
Sacrifice is a means to the reestablishment of wholeness, a wholeness that has been broken because of whatever occasions the need for the sacrifice. This right relationship begins with the connection with the earth. Then there’s the connection with the divine and last is the human centric term for a human comes last.
In our world, it’s almost the complete opposite. We mostly think of ourselves as humans only in connection with the human only world. Societally, we give a lot of lip service to our connection with the divine, but it is mostly lip service. And our connection to the earth, to the more than human world is most remote. Further, we have no sense at all that wholeness entails the alignment of these three factors of our connection with the earth, the divine and the human community.
How would you assess the state of your relationships with the earth, with the divine and with a human community? How would you assess the state of your relationship with all three of those in an interconnected whole.
One way to approach the importance of this nexus of land, the divine and community is to examine our personal histories with peak experiences. Sacrifice is presented in prosaic detail in Leviticus (to understate the case), so I invite you to examine how this connection has played out in your life. Here’s a few sentences on how it has played out in mine.
I have had peak experiences connected with the more than human world. Depending on how you define peak experiences (not my focus here), these started perhaps in Israel when I was 18 and I have had multiple others since then where I have had this enormous sense of belonging to the world. Only without being able to connect those experiences to the divine and/or a human community, I haven’t known how to follow through and let that experience change me.
I’ve had peak experiences connected only to the divine when I sat Zen. I found that incredibly frustrating because they weren’t connected to the human realm or to the earth. The very structure of Zen felt to me like it was both stronger in the presence of other people but there was always, by design, an isolation from other people who you were supposed to let have their own experience. Frustration.
I have had peak experiences where I have been connected only to the human world in hotel ballrooms. I love the high of personal growth seminars. Only it is exactly akin to the sugar high of cotton candy. This is a human centric experience, and the peak experiences didn’t wind up being transformative, because they lacked the connection with the divine and the earth.
I completely believe that for we humans, we need all three together—the earth, the divine and the human community.
How would you assess the state of your relationships with the earth, with the divine and with a human community? How would you assess the state of your relationship with all three of those in an interconnected whole?
What’s been your history with peak experiences with the earth, with the divine and with the human only world in isolation, if any. Did they stick? Any experience with two of three or with all three?
The conclusion of the first day of the initiation of Aaron and his sons into the priesthood is notable for its utter lack of instruction on what they are supposed to do. Moses tells them to cook the meat and bread and then burn what is left. This then will be repeated for the next seven days (8:33), following what has been laid out in Exodus (28:35-37). The English feels obscure when it says “He will fill your hand for 7 days.” (Leviticus 8:33), but everyone agrees this means that the rituals are being repeated for those seven days. This is clearly a purification process for the ordinands. “What has been done on this day YHVH commanded to do, to make atonement over you.” (8:34). And then what? “And you shall sit at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting day and night, seven days, and you shall keep YHVH’s charge, and you will not die.” (8:35)
What happens in those seven days? Who knows? Are they supposed to keep some kind of vigil? That would make sense, but there’s no tradition that suggests that, as far as I know. Sitting at the entrance to the tent of meeting certainly makes it sound like they are in some kind of liminal space, but what are they supposed to learn from the experience? Are they supposed to purify themselves in any way, or is purification just something that happens to them? Are they supposed to do anything that transforms them in any way—or are the new priests the same people who entered the tent of meeting seven days earlier, only now priests?
I don’t think there’s any way to answer these questions. But it begs a series of questions around preparing and ordaining religious specialists. The training of our religious specialists heavily focuses on skill and knowledge acquisition. You get training in Jewish law, history, ritual, how to work with a board, how to deliver a sermon, how to educate Bar and Bat Mitzvah kids. But what about the spiritual development of our religious specialists? Just like with the about to be priests in Tzav, most training is really silent.
What kind of spiritual preparation should our would be religious spiritual leaders undergo? What might be included in a seven day vigil of some sort? Should we mandate a fast in the wilderness?
Reincorporation is the stage of a rite of passage or an initiation where the initiate returns to his/her community and takes up their new status. An an example, consider a newly married couple returning from their honeymoon. They are absorbed into their existing community, but now they are a married couple and they are regarded differently than when they were just dating, especially if they weren’t living together.
If it is a transformational initiation (not all rites of passage are) the initiates begin offering their gift discovered during the liminal or in between period to the community. In our day, finding a community and a way to express one’s unique gifts can be totally problematic. In more traditional societies, the community to which the initiate returned was well defined. How easy it was to offer the gift discovered during the liminal period probably varied with the nature of the gift received, how well the initiate listened to the elders, the general state of the community etc.
I read Nadav and Abihu’s death as a cautionary tale of how reincorporation can be fraught with danger. The text around Nadav and Abihu’s death is so bare that it is impossible to know what their offense was. Here’s the text as a whole. “And Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Abihu, each took his fire holder, and they put fire in them and set incense on it. And they brought forward unfitting fire, which he [YHVH] had not commanded them, in front of YHVH. And fire came out from in front of YHVH and consumed them. And they died in front of YHVH.” (10:1-2). Why were they killed?
Had they had been granted a vision of some kind of new approach to which YHVH objected, or did they just make a simple mistake? Were they drunk? (there’s the prohibition against drinking beer and wine before offering sacrifices inserted into the text after their death (10:9). If they made a simple ritual mistake, its hard to believe that death is a proportionate response, especially for someone who has been as faithful to YHVH as Aaron has.
What’s the lesson we are supposed to learn? Obey YHVH in all details? Some would like that to be the lesson. And that fits with the general tenor of the text. But if you believe as I do that obedience is not a path to spiritual growth, what might we make of this story?
Let me offer a different, less literal reading. I read this story as a myth rather than something that historically happened. I see it as a myth warning us of the difficulty of bringing our gifts to a given community. If we can’t find a community or a way to express our gifts then we can’t successfully transform ourselves. If we can’t see our transformation through then part of us, the part that saw the possibility of something different, the part that saw a wider place from the narrows of where we were, that part dies, just like Nadav and Abihu did.
What’s your experience with reincorporation and its challenges? Have you struggled determining your gifts? With finding a communal context in which to express your gifts? What role do you think obedience should play in spiritual development?
QUESTIONS
How do you think of the difference between empty handed spirituality and the spirituality of a settled people whose hands are full enough? How do you integrate these two manifestations of spirituality? To what extent does the mishkan feel like an integration that works?
How would you assess the state of your relationships with the earth, with the divine and with a human community? How would you assess the state of your relationship with all three of those in an interconnected whole?
What’s been your history with peak experiences with the earth, with the divine and with the human only world in isolation, if any. Did they stick? Any experience with two of three or with all three?
What kind of spiritual preparation should our would be religious spiritual leaders undergo? What might be included in a seven day vigil of some sort? Should we mandate a fast in the wilderness?
What’s your experience with reincorporation and its challenges? Have you struggled determining your gifts? With finding a communal context in which to express your gifts? What role do you think obedience should play in spiritual development?
