As a Driven Leaf: A Drash for Parashat Bechukotai Saturday, 17 May 2014

In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Hagigah, there is a legend about four Rabbis of the second century of the Common Era who enter the Pardes, or Orchard.  Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha Ben Abuyah and Akiva.  According to the Gemara, Ben Azzai looked and died.  Ben Zoma looked and went mad.  Ben Abuyah destroyed the plants.  Only Akiva entered and departed in peace.  Ben Abuyah is so reviled by the Rabbis that he isn’t even named in the Gemara.  He is referred to as Ha-acher, ‘The Other One.’  He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

          The Gemara does not make it entirely clear what is the nature of this Pardes.  It may come from the Persian word, Paradise, which we know in English.  But even if so, it isn’t clear what exactly is meant.

           I knew the story, before I read the Talmud’s version of it, from a work of fiction by Rabbi Milton Steinberg, first published in 1939, entitled As a Driven Leaf.  I read it because it was recommended reading for candidates for admission to the graduate rabbinic program at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.  On a visit to the College-Institute before applying, I purchased all the recommended books and read them thoroughly.

In Steinberg’s version of the Talmudic legend, the Pardes is the world of philosophy, of secular knowledge.  The four colleagues, at the initiative and urging of Ben Abuyah, take a serious detour from their usual study and discourse to explore the Hellenistic world of secular knowledge.  These ideas were attractive to many Jews of their day.  In order to know how to respond to them, they had to study them in depth.  The premise is that the world of secular knowledge is so attractive that it can even draw some of the most learned, the most grounded ones astray.  The premise is that, if we allow it to draw us astray, we are in danger of losing our very souls.

I’m guessing that the faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion wanted its future rabbinical students to internalise this message because we were embarking on a lifelong quest to harmonize the worlds of sacred and secular knowledge.  The truth is that, like most students entering the College-Institute, I was more familiar and comfortable with the world of secular knowledge.  In contrast to the four Rabbis of Steinberg’s novel and the Talmudic legend that forms its basis, I had to develop a comfort with the world of traditional, sacred knowledge.  I had to, in effect, reject at least partially the world of secular knowledge.  Not all Progressive rabbis manage that step.

I mention this today, because in reading this morning’s segment I immediately noticed the phrase, a driven leaf in Leviticus 26, verse 36:  As for those of you who survive, I will cast a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies.  The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight.  Fleeing as though from the sword, they shall fall though none pursues.  In this context, as a driven leaf means with no stability, no backbone, no resolve.

  Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, in his drash on this week’s Torah reading, asserts that the reason for this lack of resolve is that the people in exile have lost sight of the essential principle:  All Jews are Responsible for One Another.  The principle is found in the Sifra and in the Babylonian Talmud.  Because we want to see ourselves as independent and autonomous, we act as leaves that are driven freely by any wind that might come up.  Instead of being bound together on the tree that gave us our life, we are blown about until we dry up and wither.  That tree is, of course, Torah:  She is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to her.

This morning’s Torah reading is, as I asserted last night, one of the more challenging passages of Torah.  It is challenging because it presents in stark detail the reality of our lives and identifies its cause.  In trying to distance ourselves from the image of God as the Exactor of Justice, we distance ourselves from an essential truth.  That truth is that our actions, our behaviours, indeed do have consequences.  When we distance ourselves from the Tradition that has watered and nourished our people for so many centuries, we are in danger of being cast about by any little wind.  And of drying up and withering.

Does this mean we should avoid the world of knowledge, the world of ideas outside of the Jewish tradition?  Not at all.  Just as with my classmates and I going into rabbinical school, most of you are likely to be more comfortable from the start in the world of secular knowledge, than in that of the Jewish sacred tradition.  So our task, rather, is to assimilate and appreciate that sacred world.  To let its timeless wisdom infuse our lives and our thinking.  Even though some of us think ourselves too old to learn new ideas, to change the course of our lives.  It is all too easy to get into the mindset that it’s too late.  But the truth is that it is never too late.  We can, and should, continue to grow intellectually and spiritually…even until the last moment of our lives.  That’s how we remain truly alive.

If we were all truly alive in this way, then we would truly constitute a learning and growing community.  And if that were the case, nobody would have to point it out to us; we would know for ourselves this essential fact.  And if we’re not a learning and growing community, then the tragedy of that condition is that we could be.  The way to begin to reach our potential, is to first recognise that we fall short of it.  And to understand why.

To be as a driven leaf is truly as bad as it sounds.  But the worst part of it, is that it is entirely unnecessary.  The tree is there for us to cling to.  And that tree is Torah.  For each one of us individually.  For all of us as a community.  Shabbat shalom.