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Graceful Fluidity / Graceful Masculinity: Behar

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Part of a periodic Torah series on graceful masculinity and Jewish values.

 

אֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ, וּמִקְדָּשִׁי תִּירָאוּ:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה.

My Sabbaths shall you observe and My Sanctuary shall you revere – I am Hashem. (Leviticus 26:2)

Shabbat is in invitation for a time of deep and personal intimacy with G-d. It is also a time of great expansiveness to support the multifaceted spectrums of connectivity. We are told that on the shabbat we are given an additional soul to accommodate the soul’s dominance over the body, particularly in an arc of gender sensitivities.1

Although there is a dispute about which day of the month the Torah was given, “According to everyone it was given on the shabbos.” Shavuot is seen as the wedding between the Jewish People and G-d, that we prepared for by counting seven weeks from the blood of Passover (Zohar).  The two tablets were given to affect the kiddushin under the chuppah of Mount Sinai (Haflah).  Tradition also teaches that this is re-experienced every week with the shabbat (Igeres Hatyul). The Ari Z”l says it is reflected in the unique blessing in the Friday night prayer “Atah Kedashta” – which can either mean “you sanctified,” or “you betrothed.”

G-d’s identity in this relationship, like the People of Israel’s, is gender fluid. We find the Jewish people as a bride אֲרוּסָתוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּבָּ”ה יִשְׂרָאֵל – G-d’s bride is Israel (Rashi Exodus 34:1), and the tablets are the Shtar – marriage document (Baal Haturim Exodus 19:4) to the bride. Even the standard structure of the wedding blessing today, “Who sanctified your people Israel though chuppah and kiddushin,” is referring to the wedding between us and G-d at Sinai (Sheta Mekubetzes).

We also find that the Jewish People are referred to as the groom, marrying the Torah (Pesachim 49b), where G-d is the father of the bride (Shemot Rabbah 33:1), and the Mikdash – sanctuaries that we are commanded to build – are quarters for G-d, as G-d is our in-law who just wants to be close to us, wherever we are.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon is short lived. Just forty days later, we sinned against G-d in an adulterous act with the golden calf (Rashi Exodus 32:20 and Avodah Zarah 44a). G-d’s identity as the Creator necessitates our exclusivity in faithful monotheism. It also translates into the validation of this identity through the celebration of the Sabbath. The Rabbis go so far as to equate observing the Sabbath as a fulfillment of the entire Torah (Ohr Hachaim 26:2).

Maimonides, in concluding his laws of forbidden relationships, writes that “the greatest antidote to acting inappropriately is to turn oneself and one’s thoughts to words of Torah and immerse their mind in wisdom, because inappropriate thoughts do not rule in one’s mind except in the mind of one whose heart is turned away from wisdom. Regarding wisdom it is said, ‘It is a beloved hind, arousing grace. . . You shall be obsessed with her love (Proverbs 5:19).”

The Talmud (Eruvin 52b) explains the comparison teaching that “matters of Torah are cherished by those who study them each and every hour like the first hour.” Each part of this verse, according to the Vilna Gaon, refers to one of the four layers of the Torah’s פרדס – Pardes, and their corresponding levels of physical, and intellectual, intimacy.

One of the consequences of the breaking of the first set of tablets, at the sin of the Golden Calf, is the necessity for the oral law (Shar Yissaschar). The Torah is referred to as both  male and female, even in the same verse (Exodus 12:49). It is also understood that the written skews masculine while the oral towards the feminine (Kiddushin 2b Ben Yehoyada). Reb Tzadok (Dover Tzedek) teaches that, although the entire Torah is from G-d, the written represents G-d’s wisdom while the oral is from Israel’s. The Zohar’s (3:73a) famous teaching that G-d, Torah, and Israel are one, can be understood as the process of G-d and the Jewish people sanctifying their union at Sinai through the written Torah, and then, coming together with the Oral Law (R’ Eliyahu Baruch). 

There is no grace like the fulfillment of the Torah – אין חן כקיום התורה (Shevet Mussar). However unlike the Shabbat, that comes every 7 days with or without us, we are responsible for showing up to do our part in furthering the acceptance, understanding, and production of Torah. The more we revisit it, the newer, deeper, and more personal it becomes. As we prepare for Shavuot, let us feel empowered and embodied to expand our connectivity to it beyond just our lived experience, by experiencing it as part of the collective whole. 

 

1. [See Shabbos as an All Gender Experience]↩

By R. Mike Moskowitz.

A time to build and a time to refrain from building

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Part of a yearlong Torah series on building and builders in Jewish spiritual life.

 

In our fast-paced world it’s rare to take a sabbatical. A week’s vacation here and there is more the norm. But a full year? That’s an awfully long time.

For a farmer, leaving the land fallow for an entire year must feel like a lifetime. And yet that’s exactly what the Torah asks; “When you enter the land that I assign to you… in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest.” No planting, no pruning, no reaping.

The Torah assures us that even without human intervention, the land will provide enough for everyone to eat, both human and beast. But there’s one thing the Torah doesn’t say: What are the farmers and the builders and the do-ers supposed to do with themselves during the sabbath year?

Perhaps the answer is that they’re not meant to do anything at all. Or at least, nothing productive. Because sometimes stopping completely is the path to our most creative moments. And a week’s vacation simply isn’t long enough to do the important work of truly resting and recharging.

This week’s Torah portion is called B’har, “on the mountain,” and it begins with an anomaly. The opening sentence is a deviation from the normal introduction, which generally reads something like, “And God spoke to Moses, saying…”

This time, two words are inserted into the standard sentence, so it reads: “And God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai.”  The addition seems unnecessary, since we already know that Moses and God are together on the mountain.

Calling our attention to the mountain is a reminder that Moses is in an elevated place, both physically and spiritually. He has left everything and everyone he knew below, and has gone to a high place, where his sole task is to listen to God. Later, he will transmit all that he heard to the people below. But for now, he is not responsible for doing, only for receiving.

We live in a world that seems to function at a breakneck pace. We hurry from here to there, hurling ourselves down highways at speeds that were once unimaginable, yet today are routine. We take vacations that are filled with sights and sounds, and return home elated by the wonderful experiences but often so tired that we jokingly say we need a vacation to recover from our vacation.

We construct lives of perpetual motion for ourselves and our families. We build an existence so structured around accomplishments that we become humans-doing instead of humans-being.  The lesson of B’har is to stop building, stop doing, and simply be.

From the heights of the mountain we can look at our lives with fresh eyes and understand anew the injunction from Ecclesiastes that there is a time to build and a time to refrain from building. Even as Torah guides us toward creating a better world, Torah also teaches us to abstain from building and give ourselves unstructured time for reflection and rejuvenation.

A year is a very long time. Even the ancient rabbis chafed at the thought of letting the land and people rest for an entire year, and they dreamt up ways to work around it by allowing just one field to represent an entire farm. But I wonder if we are short-changing ourselves by abbreviating our times of rest.

What would it do for our psyches if we took “a sabbath of complete rest” that lasted more than 25 hours? More than a week? Or a month? If we put down our tools and set aside our plans, put away our cell phones and computers, our radios and TVs? What if instead we breathed deeply, walked slowly, observed the sun as it rose and set, and watched in awe as the stars reeled above?

If we gave ourselves the chance to visit the mountain, perhaps we could return refreshed, both physically and spiritually, ready to embark on the next stage of our lives with  a renewed sense of purpose, ready to pick up our tools and begin once again to build the future.

 

By Rabbi Jennifer Singer. Sketchnote by Steve Silbert.