Shabbat Vayigash
Written by Larry Becker Monday, 17 December 2007
Who shall ascend into the mountain of the LORD? and who shall stand in His holy place?
He that has clean hands, and a pure heart; who has not taken My name in vain, and has not sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive a blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation (Ps. 24: 3–5)
We all have in our heads and our hearts echoes from our childhood. For me these three verses from Psalm 24 have a special place. They were the words proclaimed by the Rabbi of my synagogue when opening the Ark during the Torah service on Shabbat. They called myself and my fellow Junior High School students back from our self-imposed tasks of counting the bricks in the wall or contemplating our upcoming lunches to the service itself and the spiritual nourishment of Torah. At the time I had little problem with the words and they seemed to be calling to me in a way that allowed me to see myself as worthy of Torah. It was only as an adult with greater knowledge that aspects of this passage began to trouble me.
Why is the imperfect form of the verbs – יעלה , יקום, and ברכה ישא – used here for ‘will go up’, ‘will stand’, ‘will receive blessing’? Why not the present, continuing tense? Surely the fulfillment of these simple requirements can be effected now. We have no blood on our hands, we are honest, at least sufficiently so as to not swear falsely. If we are not now worthy, why not and, when will we be?
For myself, I began to see the core of the dilemma in that the Talmud (Bavli Megilah 7a), when discussing whether books like Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes are worthy of inclusion in the Tanakh, uses the phrase ‘make the hands unclean’ to indicate that a book is in fact sacred enough for inclusion! Surely this usage seems the reverse of what one would expect. We associate holiness with purity and cleanliness. While there are various answers for this question in Talmudic interpretation and anthropological treatises, my problem is of a different type. Why here the insistence that these holy books makes the hands unclean? Are we being told that in using these books we may make ourselves unworthy of ascending the Temple mount to stand in the Holy presence? I am going to make the radical suggestion that this is in fact so.
I spent last weekend on retreat with members of the Eastern Counties Association of Progressive Synagogues. Given that it was Chanukah I led a session on the various sects that came into being following the Maccabean revolt, particularly the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes, their differences and origins.
The groups originated in a time of great stress and grief. The Maccabean revolt was as much a civil war as a revolt. The fighting was protracted, bitter and entailed great suffering. In its aftermath stunned people sought solace and answers in many ways. Some adopted and adapted aspects of Hellenistic society while emphasizing the traditions of the ancestors, some sought solace in a strict and narrow focus on the Torah itself to the exclusion of all else and some sought wisdom and comfort in esoteric interpretation and messianic expectation. All of the groups accepted the Torah, all of the groups sought to follow Torah, yet each finding their own language and meaning of interpretation.
This multiplicity of approach could have been enriching. It could have allowed each group and individual to explore and share new insights and understandings in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. Yet instead each group claimed a unique quality of purity and sacredness for their own interpretation and their own practices. Each saw the food of the other as not quite kosher, so they could not eat together. The Essenes saw the Temple priesthood and practice as invalid, making it impossible for them to participate in Temple worship and in the end each saw themselves as the true Israel with the other groups and the vast majority of the people who were not members of any sect, as being lost and no longer among the chosen, the elect. Thus they cut themselves off from each other unable to intermarry or retain ties of love and civility.
Had this animosity restricted itself to invective it would have been sad, painful and destructive. But it did not stay at this level. The Sadducees, when in power persecuted the Essenes and the Pharisees. When the Pharisees came to power under John Hyrcanus they persecuted the Sadducees, and when the wheel turned once more and the Sadducees arose to power again the persecution of the Pharisees returned with renewed vigor and venom. The scriptural insights that should have been a light became a fire, burning to ashes the fellowship and affection that is the natural inheritance of the house of Israel.
Even when united in opposition to Rome, when every effort and sinew needed to be strained to the limit in the common cause, they could not restrain their contention and animosity. Both the Talmud and Josephus tell us that the strife of the people within the walls of Jerusalem weakened its defense dramatically, contributing to the fall of the city and the destruction of the Temple. For the misuse and abuse of scripture had reached the point where the hands of the people had become so unclean that not only were they unworthy of standing in God’s holy place, they unwittingly helped to tear it down.
I wish that I could say that the issue is only one of historical curiosity, that we as humanity and as individuals have moved beyond such attitudes and actions, but I am certain that we all see the flames of the Temple’s destruction in our own day. In too many lands we see Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh and Atheist abusing the insights and truths that their own traditions and texts provide. They become used as weapons to assert each group’s own superiority at the expense of their brothers and sisters. We draw comfort from the notion that the poison of fanaticism, intolerance and bigotry infecting the Middle East, the Sudan, China, the Philippines and others places too many to mention is far from these shores, or at least far from our own homes. But in our hearts we know that this is not true.
Racism and fanaticism are a disease that infects our land as it does all lands. The atheists attack the religious, and the religious attack the secular and each other in an orgy of verbal abuse that all too often acts as a prelude to persecution. That this persecution is private, secret and even illegal merely makes it all the more invidious. But at least we ourselves are free from the taint. If society is stained, at least our own hands are clean.
But is this truly so? Have we not heard or perhaps even participated in unwarranted expressions of the evil tongue and thought nothing of it? Do not we, like our ancestors in Jerusalem, engage in baseless, unnecessary disputes loudly proclaiming our own truth while refusing to listen to other truths spoken by our neighbors, our cousins and our siblings? Can all of the Jewish communities of this land even now accept each other as family, inheriting our blessing in equal measure?
The longer I contemplated these and similar thoughts the more depressed I became. Is there no hope? Are we as human beings condemned to submit to the Yetzer Ha-Ra, the Evil Inclination, to be weighed down by our weaknesses? Is there not a path that we can yet climb to reach the Holy place that remains our aspiration? If an ancient story of Chanukah helped to carry me down to this low ebb, the flow of another, more recent Chanukah story has helped to lift me up.
For a number of years now, I have gone into a local primary school to augment their teaching about Judaism. This year I went just before Chanukah. I brought in my Tallit several Kippot, Mezuzoth, Chanukiot, Dreidles, a Shofar, my Shabbat implements and of course Latkes and Donuts. I explained to the children what each item was, how it was used and most importantly what it meant to me and how it helped me to express my happiness in my Jewishness. I told the story of Chanukah, we sang together and we danced together and most important of all we ate together. When the time came for questions there were more hands raised than could be responded to in the time remaining so the teachers told the children that those who wished to could forego their play time in order to ask their questions.
A dozen of the most eager gathered round. One little girl in particular couldn’t wait to ask her question. Her hand strained upwards like a rocket and she was literally trembling with anticipation. I knew I had to let her ask her question quickly or she would surely explode killing us all. So like Moses at Meribah I tapped at the rock of her restraint. “Yes love, what is your question?” And like the waters of Meribah her words gushed forth, “WheredoyouliveIliveonsuchandsuchastreetwithmymummyanddaddyandlittlebrotherdoyoulivenearbycanIcometoseeyourMezuzah…”
At this point she stopped to catch her breath so I interrupted to answer her before I drowned in the torrent. I told her where I lived, that it was not very close to where she lives but that if she wanted to come with her mummy or daddy to see my Mezuzah they would be most welcome but that it was not very much different from the one that I had shown her in class. She seemed happy with this answer and I went on to answer the other children’s questions.
It was not until later when I had time to reflect that I realized that while I had taught her facts, she had taught me wisdom. What she was really telling me, perhaps without realizing it, was that while my way was not her way it was interesting and fun and that she liked it and me. What I was telling her was that I like and accept her too. Because neither of us was trying to convince the other of anything, neither of us was laying a claim to the only true revelation, we could take and appreciate each other as ourselves. Her pure heart reached beyond the words, the objects and the customs to the underlying truth that we all share.
After thinking about that day I realized that I had had the answer to both my questions all along. I know that we are no longer children. That innocence in any sense has been long washed away by experience and heartache. Nevertheless we can regain our clean hands and pure hearts. When and how will this be done? A section of the Torah service that many of us sing each week contains the answer.
מירושליםייודברתורהתצאמציוןכי
When the divine teaching that is the inheritance of all humanity will come forth from Zion and the word of the holy Unity from Jerusalem.
רצוןיהיכן , May this be His will.
