CHESHVAN TORAH

CHESHVAN TORAH

The parshiot of Cheshvan bring us from the third creation story in the story of Noah through the lives of the first matriarch and patriarch, Sarah and Abraham.  If there is a fifth parsha read, this is the parsha that starts the story of Jacob, and I will defer that to Kislev, the next month.

The women, of course, are not as well developed because what we have is a patriarchal text.  But the lineage that counts in Genesis descends from Sarah.  Abraham’s six children with Keturah whom he marries after Sarah’s death do not inherit anything and basically play no role in the family narrative. (Genesis 25:1-4)

These parshiot include some of the most famous of Biblical stories.  There’s the flood, the tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, the three angels announcing the that post menopausal Sarah will bear a child, the recruitment of Rebecca to come to Canaan and marry Isaac, the binding of Isaac, the burial of Sarah at Machpelah and Isaac and Ishmael coming together to bury Abraham. Lots of stories.

I have taken one theme from each of the four main parshiot that we read.  I’m not saying that these are the most important themes in the parsha.  If you want to know what I think about the binding of Isaac, for instance, read my commentary on Vayera.  These themes rather focus on the more than human world and how we might get into a proper relationship where we can treat the more than human world as a “thou” rather than as an inert thing that we are free to exploit.  Thus my commentaries have a much different orientation than other commentaries do.

These four themes and their parshiot are:

• ·       Covenant with all beings from Noah

• ·        Trees as Teachers from Lech Lecha

• ·        Need for elders in initiations from Vayera

• ·        Hitbodedut from Chayyei Sarah.

The Covenant with Noah and all other beings is an expression of an indigenous Animism.  This is a covenant with all beings; not just with humans. “God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “I now establish My covenant with you and your offspring to come, and with every living thing that is with you—birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well—all that have come out of the Ark, every living thing on earth…to [not] destroy the earth” (9:8-11)   The fact that the covenant is with all beings, and not just with humans, implies that these other beings have agency and standing. It affirms an Animistic view of the world that the whole world is alive. 

Animistic views of the world (as I’m using the term here) are characteristic of indigenous people.  In a righteous court of law, a human being could file suit on behalf of any or all of these living beings against the destruction of their habitats because they have a covenant with the divine that they not be destroyed. 

And yet, “The fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky—everything with which the earth is astir—and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand.”(9:2)   As an empirical statement, sure, almost all other beings should fear humanity and our pernicious influence on the ecosystems of the earth  with the exception of certain species who have benefitted enormously from their partnership with humans, as outlined by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Squirrels, cows, corn, white tailed deer, cats and dogs are examples of species where it can be said that they have domesticated us.

But is the Torah giving us an empirical claim or a moral claim when it says that other beings will fear and dread us? Is it a simple statement that all other earthly beings should be afraid of we humans, or a moral claim that we have the right to do whatever we want to them?  There’s an obvious long and vile history of reading this as a moral claim.  But what if we read it as a simple empirical claim about the way things are?  Then perhaps we as humans need to become aware of our ability to dominate other species, just as we need to become aware of our possibility for evil.

Wendell Berry insists that right relationship with the more than human world has to involve an economic relationship. He criticizes Romantic Poets for viewing nature as just a place to retreat to and a balm for the soul from the hubbub of civilization. He advocates for a productive relationship with the more than human world, whether that is gardening, wild foraging, working with wood in some way or raising animals. He is a compelling and lonely voice with the only sort of parallel in Jewish tradition being found in A.D. Gordon to the best of my knowledge.

How do you view the rightful place of other beings and their relationship with humans?  To what extent are you living what you imagine as right relationship? 

Trees as teachers.   The parsha’s opening words, Lech Lecha, can be translated as get going or something more like go into yourself, to dig deep into who you are.  So Abram gets up and goes from Haran and literally the first place he stopped was alon moreh. Alon Moreh, as I learned from R. Zelig Golden, literally means “Teaching Tree.”  I’ve read translations that include the “plain of Moreh (Artscroll) or “terebinth of Moreh” (JPS).  These translations miss the fact that Moreh means teacher.  It’s an easy interpretation to say that Abram is told to go deep into himself, and the first place he stops (along with his whole entourage) is a teaching tree.

One possible interpretation is that Alon Moreh refers to a sacred place where one can learn great mysteries.  The place is made sacred by the sacred grove.  Sacred groves as places of mystery and learning are common in indigenous practice.  It is also possible (and these are not contradictory possibilities) that the place is named after a tree who teaches.

If you have never learned from a tree—now is a great time to learn this practice.  Wander in some woods and find a tree to which you are drawn.  Ask permission to sit and hang out with the tree (that’s good manners—you shouldn’t walk into someone’s house and start talking without being invited).  Be with the tree.  Share back and forth.  It will feel a bit silly, but stick with it.  Another practice is to sit in the woods and ask yourself what you can learn from the trees around you. How do the trees be in the world?  What are the lessons for you?

Lest you think this is too weird and not Jewish, the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria believed that trees were resting places for souls.  He performed a tree ritual in the month of Nisan to redeem souls who were caught in trees. (Howard Schwartz Tree of Souls, p. 165.) Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav, the originator of Hitbodedut, was once staying in an inn and cried out loudly enough in his sleep that he woke up the whole place. He asked the innkeeper if the walls were made from trees that had been cut down as saplings before they were mature, and the innkeeper said yes. Then Rabbi Nachman said: “All night I dreamed I was surrounded by the bodies of those who had been murdered.  I was very frightened.  Now I know that it was the souls of the trees that cried out to me.” (ibid) So if talking and listening to trees is good enough for the Ari and Nachman, we too can be with trees and listen to them.

Nachman asserts that trees have souls, just like humans. That they can be murdered, just like humans. This is a statement of the philosophy of Animism, that all beings are alive and have equal ontological status, we are all just differently bodied.    Imagine if we lived in a world where the clear cutters of a forest could be tried in court for murder of premature trees, or the different kind of creepy crawlies that depend on a diverse age forest.  That would be a different world.

How can trees be teachers for us?

Elders are decisive in the possibility of successful initiations. Reading the anthropological literature, it is clear that initiations often involve a fair measure of ambiguity.

You have a vision of a sacred hoop or a jaguar comes and licks you three times.  What does that mean?  Even what seem to be unambiguous experiences need guidance from community elders.  If you successfully survive a walkabout, or decide to return to the Amish community after a period of interacting with the English community in a more adult way (rumspringa) or do you first solo successful hunt, that’s on the face of it pretty unambiguous.   But what did you learn about yourself that will let you take your place as a young adult in the community?  That’s less clear and needs the guidance of elders. For instance, returning to an Amish community because the English world scares you is very different than returning because you want to farm in community—and both motivations could readily be present.

It's often said that we suffer from the lack of elders in our world, and that’s true.  What I mean here by elders is people who mentor you as a younger person not because it suits some motivation like having allies as they climb a corporate ladder, but because they are committed to raising adults.  In my first vision quest, the elders who were the leaders of the quest were useless; not elders at all.  In the second quest (and I was 59 years old at the time), I had two people who caught my story, helped me understand it, helped me formulate how I could implement the vision I had in my life.

Have you had elders in your life or only “olders”?  Who were they and how did they help guide you?

“And Isaac went out walking in the field toward evening.” (24:63) This single verse is the entire basis of Hitbodedut, the Nachman of Bratzlav practice of going alone into the more than human world and crying your heart out to the divine.   Hitbodedut, it seems to me, is a fundamental practice of any kind of Judaism that seeks to deepen our connection to the more than human world.   Nahman emphasized that it was best to do this out in the woods, to use your own words and not a prescribed text, to pray in the vernacular rather than in Hebrew because it was your native language, and to make loud noises and fully cry and scream.  There’s an old story that an upscale stranger comes to visit Bratzlav and he hears this unholy din.  He is a little spooked by it and asks his host what on earth is making that noise. His host answers, oh, that’s just Nachman’s followers out praying in the woods.

The verse is a bit hard to translate.  You might well ask how Isaac walking in the fields turns into this full bodied wailing in the woods. Rashi, which is where you start when you are looking for the plain sense of a text, says that “lasooach” the verb in question, means to pour out in prayer.  The same verb is used in Psalm 102:1 and translated as “supplications” “A prayer of the afflicted person when s/he swoons and pours forth her/his supplications before YHVH.” Others translate the verb as meditating, though I don’t know how they get there.  The plain sense of the word is more like conversing, but maybe not just shooting the breeze, but more focused, like a discussion which is a sicha, same root. I offer this discussion of the verse, because I don’t think there’s one way to imitate Isaac, because, for all we know, he was just taking a walk or wanted to see how the grass was growing.

Do you have any kind of hitbodedut practice?  If you don’t, start.  Figure out what you can do consistently.  If it is 15 minutes once a week, start there.

QUESTIONS

• How do you view the rightful place of other beings and their relationship with humans?  To what extent are you living what you imagine as right relationship? 

• How can trees be teachers for us?

• Have you had elders in your life or only “olders”?  Who were they and how did they help guide you?

• Do you have any kind of hitbodedut practice?  If you don’t, start.  Figure out what you can do consistently.  If it is 15 minutes once a week, start there