Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/markkirschbaum/page/3/)
We have seen how a seemingly exclusionary set of dry ritualistic exhortations regarding an “elite”, have become transvalued into a set of universally normative spiritual and ethical goals and guidelines. In our readings, we look to the “masses” not as the source of ressentiment as did Nietszche, but rather to each and every person at every level and rank as the source of endless spiritual renewal.
In previous essays, in dealing with the dull repetitions of the mishkan (tabernacle) narrative, we discussed the idea of boundaries, of distance introduced as a result of the sin of the golden calf. The mishkan structure itself, and the garments of the priests, act as signifiers of, and simultaneously as a means of overcoming the boundaries and distance introduced by the sin of the golden calf. R. Zadok Hacohen adds an interesting comment, which would be incredibly radical except that the source of the quote is the Talmud (BT Nedarim 22: )
“If it weren’t for the sin of the Golden Calf, the Jews would only have received the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Joshua”.
I will admit that I’ve always had a certain hesitation when it came to Purim. It wasn’t that I was so influenced by Bible criticism or historical scholarship, it was my own sense that the Book of Esther, the focus of the holiday of Purim, read more like a novel than a book of prophecy. It is probably for this reason that if you ask many people which came first, Hanukka or Purim, they would say that Purim was later- there is something more modern about Purim and the Megilla than about the Hanukka story. The Hanukka story feels more biblical than does the Esther story for a number of reasons- it takes place in the land of Israel, there’s a Temple with sacrifices and ritual purity, but most of all, there’s a miracle at the core of the story, whereas with Purim, there is no miracle, it takes place in exile, the Jews are a persecuted minority, and a lot of political intrigue is involved. So, despite its being hundreds of years earlier, the Purim story feels more modern, more contemporary. More importantly, the book of Esther, the “megilla”, reads more like a novel than any other sacred Hebrew text, though it is included among the books of the “bible”. I would like to argue now that this novelistic quality, seemingly a detraction from the sanctity of the holiday, may be, in fact, literally, its redeeming quality.
As is usual with events of the magnitude of tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes, at some point theologians, essayists, and pundits of various sorts will attempt to make some sense out of the catastrophe. One question which arises (usually sometime after the question arises as to who will pay for the damages) is the old theological question, “where was God when all this happened?” or, “how could a God let this happen”?
Kristeva, in her Powers of Horror, describes the powerful sensation of food loathing as an evolution of desire into abjection-
…loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung…the repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage and much…The fascinated start that leads me towards and separates me from them… food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection… ‘I’ want none of that element… ‘I’ expel it … I abject myself within the same motion through which ‘I’ claim to establish myself… There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being…
Rabbi Yosef Haim, better known as the Ben Ish Hai (born about 1834), wrote in his Aderet Eliyahu that the ‘plague’ of darkness we encounter in this week’s perasha is the last that Moshe and Aharon are responsible for (he builds around a Talmudic dictum that a prisoner liable for lashing can only receive a number divisible by 3, hence the maximum of 39, and thus the plagues have to be 9), while the tenth one, that of the killing of the firstborn, was a separate entity brought about by God alone, not in the category of plagues.
‘ve chosen to repost this particular essay for its uncanny relevance to the recent tragedy at Newtown, particularly the final teaching by the Aish Kodesh, prefaced by an additional teaching not in the original, that resonates with the tragedy. One of the points made in the essay, which deals with a textual hint of silence on the part of Jacob when blessing his sons, is that there are times when language is not adequate to the task at hand, but rather there are times when action, not words, is the necessary response.
I don’t think I need to retell the story of the akedah, the “sacrifice of Isaac” by his father Abraham, following the word of God, I find it emotionally difficult to retell the tale in a literal manner. I do think the entire episode demands a dramatic reevaluation. I suppose, if I wanted to put my problem with this passage in an inflammatory manner, I could ask, what kind of God is it that puts any person through this kind of “test”, and what kind of man is Abraham if he chooses to follow such a command? Eli Wiesel tells the story of a woman at the gates of Auschwitz (a story borrowed and corrupted in Sophie’s Choice) who is asked to choose which of her two children will be sent to the crematorium, her immediate response is a howling, shrieking insanity; her tormentors shot her on the spot. No human being can or should ever be put through what may be the cruelest form of torture, the loss of a child, certainly not by a compassionate God.
…the Word is the Word,
the Word shows the extent of our
Verbal incapacity,
Cut off from reality,
The sound of these words serving us deceptively. Yet the value of imagery,
What we put into these words… Antonin Artaud
The message of the opening passages of the Torah is a message about being. As Rashi points out with his very first comment, the narration of the creation is meant to teach us not basic lessons in science and cosmology, but rather something about our being in the world. As this question of “Being” is so fundamental an aspect of contemporary discourse, it is worth addressing, right at the Beginning.
A line in Neila caught my attention at the end of Yom Kippur. It reads:
“our remains will be naught but dust, thus God has given us many prayers”. Recognizing the emptiness of the confrontation with that void, that abyss of non-existence, we are given the chance to utter words which suggest a meaning for existence, prayers for life, for the existing world and the people which inhabit it. We know we are alive because we can still pray, still dream of beautiful things. This brought to mind R. Pinchas of Koretz’s line, that it is our swaying during prayers which cause the winds to blow (the winds which then cause the grass to grow).