I'm on Vacation...

...so, no drashot for a couple of weeks!  I'll be back soon!

Drash for Parashat Naso

To Drink the Bitter Waters

Top Ten Commandments by Kinky Friedman:

Walking on the ragged streets of time 
A man is asking if there is a dime 
Someone can spare. 
No one pays him any mind, 
But surely someone sees him there a-crying when no one’s there. 
And the washed out whore demands the bottle in his hands. 

Ah, Mister, don’t you weep, God knows we’ve tried to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten commandments. 

You can’t believe the thing you’ve seen on the midnight TV screen 
And nightmare sent by satellite. 
Rain fire falling from the skies a mother holds her baby and cries 
And day for us for them is night. 

And love is just a word we preach for who can learn what none will teach. 
Ah, people, don’t you weep, God knows we’ve tried to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten commandments. 

And moving across on the city street a neighbour tried to find his feet and fell on down and slipped to ruin. 
The bystanders are all standing by watching from corners of their eyes wondering what on earth can he be doing. 

With a faith nobody shared and a love nobody dared 
Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, someday we’ll learn to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten Commandments.

In recent days, we have seen the discovery of three women who were kidnapped and kept captive as for a decade, in a house of squalor in Cleveland, Ohio USA.  They were apparently kept in chains and other restraints, for the purpose of the sexual gratification of their captor, alleged to be Ariel Castro.  No, he isn’t Jewish despite his given name…thank God for small favours!  It’s a case that has the world fascinated, and no doubt appalled that something like this could happen in a densely populated neighbourhood of a major American city.  The neighbours, and the alleged captor’s family, claim that they didn’t have a hint as to what was going on.

This week, Jody Arias was convicted in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, of the first degree murder of her boyfriend, apparently over sexual jealousy and desire for revenge.  She argued for mitigation of the charges because, she claimed, the victim had abused her, sexually and otherwise, repeatedly and continuously.  Perhaps, but the jury did not buy it.

Funny how all these cases come out of the USA?  It’s enough to send an American abroad running for cover.  But really, the truth is that there have been equally appalling incidents of sexual abuse, and sexually-motivated abuse, here in Australia and elsewhere.  Everywhere.

On this past Wednesday, when we gathered for the morning service for Shavuot, we read the Ten Commandments from the twentieth chapter of Exodus as is the custom.  As you know, I like to call them the Top Ten Commandments.  This, after the ironically humorous song by the American Jewish Country artist, Kinky Friedman.  I personally like to call them the ‘Top Ten’ as an acknowledgement that they are not the only Ten.  Specifically there are 603 more…at least by traditional accounting.  But just as the Top Ten songs on the current hit charts get the lion’s share of ‘air time,’ these Top Ten Commandments get the most attention.

But that’s not to say that we’re so careful about complying with them.  Thankfully, I doubt that there’s a murderer in this room.  But if we’re honest, everybody here has probably violated most of the other nine at one time or another.  And that may include that pesky Seventh Commandment…Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

There’s never any shortage of scandals in the world involving extramarital sex, or marital infidelity, or ‘Adultery’ as rendered in the common translation of our Seventh Commandment.  Powerful people often misbehave sexually, and when they do it makes juicy tidbits on the news.  But each one of us personally knows someone, someone neither powerful nor famous.  Someone who didn’t make the evening news, yet who was hurt by their partner’s sexual behaviour.  The experience of hurting or being hurt – perhaps unsurprisingly, many people play both roles sooner or later – can lead us to question why Lo Tin’af, Thou shalt not commit adultery, is included in the Top Ten Commandments.

When you think about it, the common experience with sexual infidelity is exactly why this offence is included.  Inclusion of any offense in a law code, implies that the specific behaviour is likely to be attractive to people.  It implies that, left to their own devices, people would tend to engage in it.  If it wasn’t attractive to large numbers of people, why would it have to be legislated against?  It also implies that the framers of the law code in question saw the particular offence as deleterious to the public order.  The People Israel in receiving the Torah were a loose band of wanderers trying to constitute themselves into a people ready to rule themselves in their own land.  One can see the importance of a strong family structure among these people.  One can see that widespread licentious sexual conduct would hamper the kind of social cohesion that would enable them to succeed in their national quest.  Inclusion in the Ten Commandments of Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery, implies that the ancient Israelites had a problem with adultery.  And that it would pose a problem as they occupied and subdued their Promised Land.

As I like to point out on occasion, I belong to the so-called Baby Boomer Generation – the generation that was born in the years following the Second World War when our parents settled down and fuelled a wave of economic prosperity.  The parents of my generation were happy, after a childhood mired in worldwide economic depression and a young adulthood spent amid the horrors of the war, to re-affirm the value of life and express their optimism for the future by making lots of babies.  And they were far more indulgent of those babies than previous generations were.  So we baby boomers were the most indulged, most coddled, most spoiled children in history.  That is of course, until the generations that came after us!

One of the ‘gifts’ my generation gave to the world was the sexual revolution.  Thanks to a number of social developments, not the least of which was the development of The Pill, we ‘discovered’ the joys of sex at a young age and we proceeded to break and flaunt all existing sexual mores that existed.  Perhaps the then-existing sexual mores needed a bit of ‘adjustment.’  Perhaps there was, as is often charged, far too much duplicity and hypocrisy in the way people behaved sexually.  But in retrospect, we threw away all framework of restraint and replaced it with what can only be termed, utter nihilism.

What characterises our present age is not that people commit sexual offences against one another.  As I pointed out, that was happening among the ancient Israelites…and before!  Rather, it is the way that we commit sexual offences with no sense of shame or regret, except perhaps regret over the consequences of being caught.  Infidelity has become to us like exceeding the speed limit on the highway.  We know it is against the law, but we only take it seriously as far as we think we might be caught.  But the truth, certainly if one gives credence to Queensland Transport’s current ‘Better Slow Down’ anti-speeding campaign, is that highway speeding is not a victimless offence.  And nor is marital infidelity.

We would do well to acknowledge that sexuality is a very powerful force in our personalities.  To acknowledge that expression of our sexual selves has the potential to bring us and our partners great joy…or great pain.  To admit that, even if the mores existing in the 1950’s were at times hypocritical and needed some adjustment, that a world without sexual restraint is also not good.  Not good for us as individuals, and not good for society as a whole.  Most of the sexual offences we commit, do not begin to approach the severity of those allegedly committed by Ariel Castro in Cleveland or Jody Arias in Phoenix.  Thank God for small favours!  But the offences that we so commonly commit, do create a lot of pain – physical and emotional.

 Which brings us to the third section of this week’s Torah reading.  It outlines the procedure to be followed when a man believes that his wife has committed the offence of voluntary sexual infidelity.  We didn’t read as far as the part where the wife is forced to drink the Bitter Waters.  If the drink kills her, it proves her guilt.  If it doesn’t kill her it exonerates her.  Of course we should be appalled about the idea that a man can force his wife to drink poison if he suspects her of adultery.  But you should know that there’s an entire tractate in the Talmud devoted to the idea, and its administration.  It isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface.  And it is quite possible – and plausible – that the Bitter Waters do not represent some kind of poison.  Rather, this may be simply a public ritual where the water – holy water mixed with some kind of dust – is meant to be metaphorical of the ‘bitter waters’ of improper sexual behaviour and public shame.  Perhaps some time we’ll study part of this tractate and try to understand what it comes to teach us.  For now, I want to address the simply idea of putting the matter in ‘God’s Hands.’

The situation foreseen in the passage is where there is no witness to the alleged offence.  But the husband’s jealousy, and the rage it creates, is very real.  Sexual misconduct represents the breaking of a vow, the transgressing of a code of conduct.  But it represents something far deeper than that.  The ‘production’ of offspring, and their essential identity, of course.  But also the very repository of the deepest feelings and attachments of one person for another.  It is therefore something very serious, and our Torah reading acknowledges that one cannot just ignore it.

But one also cannot take matters into one’s own hands, and act on the passions that the situation creates.  To me, that’s the real message of this text.  Instead of jumping to our own conclusions, we place the situation into someone else’s hands for resolution.  And that ‘Someone Else’ in this case is God, through the office of the priest.  There is a procedure, and it is followed, and the truth is discerned through a dispassionate means.  The waters may be bitter, but drinking the Bitter Waters is better than ‘honour killings’ or allowing the jealousy and hurt to fester. 

The procedure of the Bitter Waters, this particular way to out ‘the truth’ in a case of suspected adultery, is no longer in force.  Obviously, since there’s no longer a corps of priests to perform the rite!  I’m not complaining!  But we still drink, far too frequently, from the bitter waters of infidelity and sexual offence.  It’s a powerful force that sadly leads us to hurt one another even when that is not our intent.  Even if most of us will commit nothing like the crimes of Ariel Castro and Jody Arias, many of us will ultimately hurt, or be hurt by, someone close to us.

Even in the shadow of the sexual revolution, we should admit that constraints against absolute freedom of sexual behaviour are not a bad thing.  They may have needed adjustment, but not abolishment with the resulting anarchy.  And even if the Bitter Waters is no longer the way to learn the truth, we can still take a lesson from what we understand of its intent.  And that is, that it is necessary to sort out such matters dispassionately, perhaps with the help of some sacred body, to seek out the truth and then accept it when arrived at according to the best efforts.  We engage in far too much Trial by Media, or Trial by Gossip.  Instead, we should listen to the wisdom of our Torah as it prescribes trial by sacred agent and procedure.  Any quest for truth is bound to be like drinking of bitter waters.  But if we do our best to discern truth, the bitter water of knowing the truth will sting far less than acting out our passions and jealousies.  Shabbat shalom. 

Drash for Shavuot

Chag Sameach, Lovers of Torah!

Clara and I arrived here on 23 May of last year.  But due to the variations of the Jewish Calendar, in Jewish terms we’ve been here just over a year.  I know that because, last week, as I was preparing my drash for Bamidbar, I realised I’d spoken on that Parashah the first Shabbat we were here on the Gold Coast.  So I had to look up the drash I gave that Shabbat and read through it, and Make sure I wasn’t repeating myself this year.  And there it was, on my hard drive…and thank God what I’d decided to say last week for the first weekly portion in the Book of Numbers, wasn’t the same message I gave a year ago!  And now, every time I prepare a drash, I’ll have to check my thoughts against what I said for the same Parashah the year before.  As you can see, when a rabbi starts developing longevity on the job, his job becomes ever harder!  But the worst thing is the High Holy Days, Yamim Hanora’im of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  Because we rabbis see our drashot on those days as a kind of valedictory, we pour our hearts into our sermons for those days and really endeavour to say something profound and new.

          I don’t usually sweat the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, of which Shavuot is one, nearly as much.  In fact, I seldom give drashot on these festival days.  Why?  Well for one thing, each festival has its own message that is built-in, if you will, to the history and purpose of the day.  Shavuot, which began just over an hour ago as sunset, is Chag Matan Torah…the festival of giving the Torah.  This is the anniversary, according to the Rabbis, of the event on Sinai that largely defines us as a religious group.  Actually, the three festivals taken as a series, define Jewish religion, that is the relationship of the Jewish people to the God of Israel, in its totality.  Passover’s message is that we needed to be free of the tyrannous rule and servitude of Pharaoh if we were to serve God.  Through signs and wonders, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God provided that freedom.

Shavuot’s message is that we need memory and parameters if we are to service God.  The Torah provides both.  Its text recounts our oral history, how a band of nomads came to be a people, and how that people was forged in adversity.  Its text provides the legislation that informs us what God, who gave us our freedom, expects of us.  On Shavuot we read the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Utterances.  These do not, in and of themselves, constitute a law code.  Rather, they form a sort of preamble to the law code that is Halachah.  The Ten Commandments form a basis for all the legislative messages in the Torah.  When we read the Ten Commandments, as we shall in our Torah reading tomorrow morning, we do not for a minute think that we’re reading a sum-total of God’s expectations of us.  Rather, we are looking at the ‘tip of iceberg’; we are looking at an elegant encapsulation of the principles that underlie all of Jewish law.

And then of course there’s Sukkot, which happens after Yom Kippur.  Its message is that the same God who gave us freedom, the same God who gave us a blueprint for our life as a people, kept us safe and nourished during our years of wandering.  Even after imposing upon our distant ancestors the sentence that they would die in the desert in preparation for their children’s inheriting the Holy Land, God then stayed with the people.  He saw to their needs and comforted them.  He instructed them to craft the Tabernacle, to be used in the cultic rites that were a reminder of His presence.

Three festivals, three different themes.  And taken together, they spell out what it means to be a Jew.  But tonight, I’m going to break my pattern and offer you a few thoughts.  Why?  Well, because I can…of course!

I had a girlfriend once.  Yes, I know…quite incredible!  And yes, this was before Clara and I met!  So I had a girlfriend, and we were the only Jews in our small city of about 80,000 souls.  Okay, we weren’t the only Jews in this city!  But we were the only visible Jews in this city.  My girlfriend, Donna was very visible, because she was half of the pair of principal presenters on the evening news program on this city’s only television station.  I was visible because I was in the Navy and did a lot of community service work.  So there were other Jews around, a small congregation of them not to mention those who wouldn’t be caught dead in the local synagogue!  (Sound familiar?)  But since they didn’t have public roles, and they didn’t dress like Paul Corias, one wouldn’t know they were there…unless one knew them personally.

So this young woman, Donna the Jewess who was on the evening news, and I sometimes made community appearances together.  She liked to take me along because I was a perfect foil.  And I was often able to go, because I would wear my uniform and my commanding officer was happy for his sailors to make appearances in town in uniform.  So one day Donna and I were at a local school where we were judging some competition:  I think it was the National History Day Fair or some such.  And afterward, while talking to the children, it somehow came out that Donna was Jewish.  And because it was a Christian school, a few of the children were immediately full of questions.  At that moment, I was busy with another cluster of children who were asking about all the cool badges and ribbons on my uniform.  Donna called me over to ask me to field a question that she couldn’t answer. “Don can answer that,” she told the child who’d asked. “He loves the Torah.”

Now I’d never thought of myself as a particular lover of the Torah.  I was simply a Jew, always trying to learn something new, always trying to discern what it was that God wanted me to do.  (And speaking in rhyme like Johnny Cochran…)  Of course, I would touch my Tallit to the Torah when it went past, and then kiss the Tallit, as a sign of veneration.  And I tried to live out the values and the lifestyle that we learn from Torah.  But if someone would say of a person, “he loves the Torah,” that would have evoked images of Chassidim dancing ecstatically with the scrolls on Simchat Torah or some such.  I simply didn’t see myself as fitting that description.

So my friend’s proclamation, that Don would be the one to answer the child’s question because “he loves the Torah,” got me to thinking.  Especially because I was able to answer the child’s question which, it turned out, was not a difficult one.  When I had a chance to really chew on Donna’s words, I realised that I did, indeed, love the Torah.

And most of you do, too.  No, you don’t do so demonstratively.  At least, not all the time.  But the fact that you’re here tonight, celebrating the Feast of Weeks, says something important.  When other Jews are home waiting for NCIS to begin, you’ve come here to spend an hour at shule, honouring that it is an important festival today and wanting to make a statement about it.  And your statement, repeated in every Jewish community in the world today beginning here in Australasia and working its way west, reverberates powerfully.  On a weeknight, when you’ve just been in this sanctuary a couple of days ago and will be again in just a few days, you’ve taken the time to attend this service.  Even if you don’t think of yourself as the most religious Jew on the planet, you’ve added your voice and your presence to an important phenomenon.  Yes, chances that you think yourselves this way…and perhaps I’m embarrassing you by saying so.  But unless I’m dead off base, you too are Lovers of the Torah.

Oh, I guess I could now go on to tell you of the responsibilities that being a Lover of Torah entails.  I guess I could try to convict your hearts to translate that love into some particular action.  But not tonight.  Oh, I reserve the right to bring that message some other night, some other day.  But for now, let’s just bask in the notion that we are Lovers of Torah.  Try not to be embarrassed about it.  It doesn’t mean that you’re too Jewish, too religious!  It just means that your heartstrings, or perhaps some other imperative, pull you to this place tonight.  Chag Sameach, Lovers of Torah!   

Drash for Parashat Bamidbar

It matters who does the Counting

You may know that I consider myself something of an ‘armchair’ historian.  That is to say, I enjoy reading, and understanding history.  But I am not trained as an historian, and I cannot claim the title of ‘historian’ without the modifier above.  But I have read to the point that I think that I have some appreciation of the great events and trends that have shaped the world as we know it today.  I believe that history is a very important discipline, perhaps one of the most important of all the humanities.  When I first read what George Santayana wrote about remembering the past, it resonated deeply with me.  The Spanish essayist famously stated: “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”  He is often misquoted in different ways, but even then his message is usually quite clear:  it is important to know, and therefore to study, history.

So, why didn’t I become an historian?  Who knows?  To paraphrase Gene Wilder in the film The Frisco Kid:  “God made me a rabbi.  Maybe God had enough historians.”

The truth is that the study of history was much maligned by high school students when I was in school.  One would hear horror stories that the study of history is all about “memorising names and dates” as if they are all disconnected factoids. “Memorising names and dates” became a trope for the notion of learning irrelevant information with which one would not otherwise bother.

Given that I graduated from high school close to forty years ago – and I never thought I would be saying that – I have grown and matured and, I hope, wizened since then.  I still have little patience for memorising disconnected factoids.  I’m not a big fan of trivia games and trivia evenings.  But I see the study of history as being far deeper than the memorisation of irrelevant information.

This Shabbat, we begin reading the fourth book of the Torah, Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers in common designation.  As the book begins, God instructs Moses and Aaron to organise a census of the people Israel.  They are to be counted, all the males from age 20 and above, all those fit for military service.  They are not only to be counted, but organised into military formations, by tribe, with leaders of various echelons to be identified and appointed by leaders from each respective tribe.  These leaders were appointed to work with Moses and Aaron to accomplish these tasks.  The first order of business, which we have just read in our public reading from the first chapter, was to actually name the tribal leaders who will conduct the census.

This information may seem extraneous.  It may seem tantamount to the “disconnected factoids” that students often think that history as an academic discipline entails.  But there’s nothing extraneous about the identities of the officials involved in the census.  They would be aware of which families had how many sons eligible for service.  And they would also be aware of the capabilities of the men in question, the better to organise them into troops and echelons.

The use of tribal officials to determine military draft and organisation has its modern equivalent.  The United States, from 1940 until 1973, relied on local Draft Boards to determine who would serve.  Military call-ups, deferments, and exemptions were decided by boards made up of prominent citizens in each town and city.  This lent authority to the entire process, since these decisions were being made not by some faceless bureaucrat in Washington but by boards comprised of local citizens.  One can certainly argue that the process, handled at a local level, had more credibility as long as those administering it were known to be upstanding citizens, as intended.  And of course, its purpose was critical:  to staff the army during wartime.  The process needed the full cooperation of the country’s citizens if it was to fulfil its intended function.  That the system broke down during the Vietnam War – as it apparently did here as well – had to do with the extensive scope of deferments and exemptions available.  This, plus a lack of popular appreciation as to that war’s purpose.  In addition to other factors.  But then, we’re not here this morning to study the Vietnam War…

So, to the ones being mustered and counted and assigned, there was nothing extraneous about the identities of the tribal elders assigned to serve on the ancient equivalent of a ‘draft board.’  And there’s nothing extraneous about the fact that the tribes of Israel functioned as autonomous entities.  True, Moses served as the head of the confederation, until he died and was replaced by Joshua bin Nun.  But as we learned way back in the Parashat Yitro in the Book of Exodus, the tribes were organised to be mostly self-governing.  All but the most difficult disputes and issues were dealt with at the lowest possible echelon, at the tribal level. 

That’s how the Israelite nation functioned for generations.  The tribes were organised into an army, with the army’s divisions organised along tribal lines with tribal officers leading the troops into battle.  But once the nation entered and occupied the Land, the people were arrayed geographically according to tribe.  Each tribe’s territory was ruled autonomously.  There was no institutional central government.  The Malbim, Rabbi Meir Leibush who lived in Russia in the 19^th century, asserts that this tribal geographic division is the very reason that the conquering army was organised by tribe.  The tribes cooperated in cultic matters, under the leadership of the tribe of Levi, who were set aside for that purpose.  Also when there were threats to the nation.  There was no king, only judges:  ad hoc leaders who arose to lead at certain key times.  That is, until the people demanded a centralised organisation under a king.  Saul was the first king appointed, followed by David.

The word ‘tribalism’ has a negative connotation today.  It means factionalism; it means allegiance to something other than the state.  Tribalism is seen as weakening the state.  In the case of an emerging state such as Iraq, tribalism clearly impedes the creation of a polity that can govern with any effectiveness.  So in the modern world, the argument that tribalism gets in the way of progress, is probably not a difficult argument to make.  But in the ancient world, and certainly among the emerging people Israel, tribal loyalty was a strength.  It was the glue that kept the people together.  It was the basis for bringing the nation together for the difficult tasks ahead.  It matters that specific tribal leaders supervised the counting for the census.

But it takes an appreciation of the discipline of history, to enable one to truly understand this.  Otherwise, we have a tendency to superimpose our contemporary sensibilities and values over people and events that happened long ago.  And that is not helpful.  It impedes us from learning the lesson of history.  And actualises the pitfall identified by Santayana.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one other fact – definitely not an irrelevant factoid – about the list of tribal officials who were to conduct the census.  The name of the first official listed – Elitzur – means ‘God is my Rock,’ or ‘God is my Protector.’  The name of the last person mentioned is Einan, which means ‘eye.’  The Ba’al Turim, Jacob ben Asher whose life spanned the 13^th and 14^th centuries, asserted that this alludes to the verse Deuteronomy 32.10:  “(God) protected (Israel) like the pupil of His eye.”  In other words, Rabbi Jacob saw the names as predicting that God would register His approval of the enterprise by protecting the Israelite army in its coming campaign.

I know that I’ve asserted on occasion that the Torah is not a history text.  That it is a morality text.  But it is couched in the form of an epic narrative that chronicles people and events asserted to be historical.  It is therefore important to apply the principles of history as a discipline when reading, and trying to make sense of, the Torah.  And if it is an important morality text as I’ve asserted, then it is important to make sense of it.  May we succeed in doing so.  Shabbat shalom.

Drash for Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai

Australian Dairy Farm

That it May Go Well for You

Here in this Lucky Country, in this land of plenty where we are blessed to live, it is hard to really appreciate the grinding poverty and hunger of other parts of the world.  But it exists.  Always somewhere over the horizon.  Out of sight…but hopefully not out of mind.  Because one would have to be heartless not to acknowledge that the kind of poverty I have in mind does exist.  The kind where children – and adults – routinely die of malnutrition.  The sort of places from which we see haunting images of distended bellies and discoloured mouths.  Of listless people who don’t even swat as flies buzz around their heads.

The fact that such hunger is limited to specific places, begs the question:  what is it about these places that causes such a shortage, or imbalance of resources?  Why do some places experience disaster after disaster that causes famine, with not only hunger but lasting physical and social devastation?

With that question in mind, we read today’s Torah reading from Leviticus 26.3-14, that promises abundance and plenty if we will only obey God’s laws and commandments.  If we are obedient, things will go well for us.  Had we read further in the chapter, we would also have read a vivid description of the kind of disaster that the Torah predicts, should we not follow God’s laws and commandments.  If we fail to obey, things will not go well for us.

So are we to look upon places that prosper, and assume that their inhabitants are following God’s laws and commandments?  And to look upon places that suffer poverty and famine, and assume that their inhabitants regularly transgress God’s laws and commandments?

Obviously such an assumption, even when cloaked in genuine concern, can and does come off as being arrogant.  But if we are blessed to live in a land of plenty, a land without hunger, shouldn’t we assume that we’re doing something right?  Lucky as this country may be, it still requires good stewardship to keep it ‘lucky’!  And if it is okay to think that, then isn’t the corollary – that the countries chronically suffering are doing something wrong – also valid?

In Progressive Judaism, we have traditionally had a problem with passages in the Torah such as this one for this very reason.  They are part of Torah and we cannot excise them.  But we must somehow make sense of them.

We can write them off as expressions of the theology of a God whom we reject.  We can say that this is not God was we understand Him.  And I would not disagree with that sentiment.  I do not believe that God, incensed at a nation’s non-compliance with His law, smites that nation with His wrath.  That’s not within my own understanding of God’s nature.  Even though the latter is really beyond understanding...

When we think of the phrase ‘God’s laws and commandments’ today, we tend to automatically think specifically of ritual law.  Keeping kosher.  Avoiding forbidden activities on the Sabbath.  Rendering the proper documents in their proper forms – for example, the ketubah and get – at the prescribed times of our lives.  Mourning in the prescribed way.  It is hard to make a moral connection with our compliance – or non-compliance – with these statutes, and how much we prosper or do not.  If we do focus on such things only, then we’re looking at a very limited part of God’s law.

But God’s law as presented in the Torah includes rules that make simple good sense.  For example, in agricultural law.  The Torah demands practices that are common in successful agricultural economies.  These are practices that care for the land and help ensure sustained successful harvests.  These are practices that are often ignored in places where crops fail or are marginal year after year.  Places that cannot feed their inhabitants.  Places where famine has changed the very weather patterns over the years, drying up seasonal rains.

Although ostensibly caused by a protracted drought, it was bad farming methods that largely caused the ‘Dust Bowl’ of the American Midwest of the 1930’s.  That resulted in devastation which depopulated large swaths of a number of US states.  But Americans learned the lesson from their misfortune.  The government today encourages farmers through financial and other incentives to institute a number of practices that have led to sustainable farming.  They have restored the fertility of the land.  American farmers are once again feeding the huge US population and other large parts of the world as well with their massive grain harvests.  They were not looking to the Torah for guidance in how to effect this restoration.  But much of what they did, came from wisdom already stated in the pages of the Torah.

Another good example is the State of Israel.  The Ottoman Province of Palestine, part of which became the modern Jewish State, was an impoverished backwater of the late Turkish Empire.  Its hillsides were seriously eroded.  Its lowlands were covered in malarial swamps.  When the Jews began settling and cultivating the land, they used scientifically-proven methods.  These settlers were largely secular Jews – they weren’t necessarily looking to the Torah for guidance.  But their methods were already largely found in the wisdom of the Torah.  And look at how the land has blossomed!  Long-time residents tell of how the microclimate has changed over the decades – of how it has cooled and become wetter – thanks to the successful cultivation of the land.  Good methods, used for years, bring change that ultimately becomes self-sustaining.

So we can look upon the successes of agricultural economies and admit that the Torah contains wisdom in this area after all.  And if we can make such an admission, then we can ‘mine’ the Torah for wisdom in other areas as well.  And we can admit – and even celebrate – that the Torah serves as a compendium of wisdom in various disciplines.  Thus we can read the prediction of success and prosperity if one follows its law – and disaster if one does not – less in terms of Divine reward of punishment.  Rather, perhaps such phenomena simply represent the prosperity that follows from good sense decision-making.  And the poverty that follows from poor stewardship.  To put it another way:  perhaps God has no ‘need’ to reward or punish us for our compliance or transgression of His law.  We create our own reward or punishment.  Because God’s law, at least much of it, has proven to be sensible and plain good practice.

Perhaps this does not help us to have compassion for places that do not put into effect the Torah’s wisdom.  Or does it?  If we are blessed with success and prosperity, then that gives us a responsibility to assist other places in learning the wisdom we possess.  This is why Australia is so quick to send assistance, technical and otherwise, when disaster strikes elsewhere.  As, I’m proud to say, does the United States.  But I’m most proud to point to Israel, and the way she responds when disaster strikes in far-away places.  Despite being a tiny country with a relatively-small population and economy, despite her own ongoing security problems, despite being particularly reviled among the nations of the world, Israel is usually the first to offer, and then provide assistance.  I’ll never forget seeing the Israeli flag flying over the very first aid hospital set up in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010.  In America’s backyard – but the Israelis were the first to assist.  

If we accept the premise that there is abundant wisdom inherent in God’s law, then we should look for good consequences if we live according to it.  And bad consequences if we do not.  It’s only logical.  And if this book that we lovingly take out and read every week does have intrinsic value and wisdom, then we aught to share that wisdom with the world.  We have a fount of wisdom to share with the world.  To share with others the means to live and prosper.  That’s the Torah’s universal message.  That humanity should live and prosper. 

And that is up to us.  Do thusly – establish good, healthy practices based on timeless wisdom – and it will go well for you.  Fail to do so, and it will not go well.  Those are the choices.  May we make the right one, and influence other peoples to do likewise.  That it may go well for all.