Realistic Theology

Torah-Inspired, Reflection of The Day:

Today we look at B'chukotai, Leviticus 26:3 - 27:34 - two chapters, almost, with the first focused on the outcomes of following or not following God's commandments, and the second on the rules about vows, concluding with the last verse of Leviticus:

These are the commandments that Adonai commanded Moses for the Israelites at Mount Sinai.

As rationalists, we often bristle at the idea that following commandments would result in blessings and not following them would result in curses. Reward and punishment theology seems unrealistic at best, we even have a Biblical book arguing against it entirely - the Book of Job.

So how do we learn from these texts?

When we follow reasonable practices that help us get along with each other better, when we treat the planet better, we will likely find our lives turn out better. Following a social contract creates better society. Noticing that certain practices hurt the environment, and in turn our livelihoods and fates, and then changing our behavior, leads us to a better life for all.

Our theology should support demands for improved behavior, without threatening supernatural rewards and punishments.

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Celebrating Our Vulnerability on Sukkot

[From Sukkot Worship at Temple Beth El, on Monday, October 11, 2012 - 15 Tishrei 5772]

Our pilgrimage festivals seem to follow a natural pattern:

Passover – celebrate freedom

Shavuot – celebrate the giving of Torah

Sukkot – if we were to complete the pattern, we should be celebrating the arrival in Israel, the completion of our journey.

Instead, we celebrate our vulnerability – we celebrate the sources of our sustenance – how the planet provides for us through harvest and shelter, and how fragile all of that is.

Seems strange, as the finale of a three-part series – freedom, wisdom, vulnerability – this is something of a let down.

Yet, this may be one of the central keys to Judaism.

When we arrive in the Promised Land, when we complete the journey, our history has just begun. We do not celebrate a final sense of redemption in this world. We are not a people who believe that our work will be, or has ever been, complete.

Instead, we choose, as the most celebratory of our three primary festivals, to take in the harvest, eat, drink, and be satisfied, for a moment, while still knowing that the seasons will yet change again, and there will be more work to be done.

We do not have a holy day that marks completion, instead we sit in our temporary structures on Sukkot, happy to have brought in a good harvest, and see how fragile it all is. We notice that our completion is momentary.

Sukkot sends us a fundamental message about the nature of life. As we have come through our seasons of inspiration, our celebration of the creation of the world on Rosh Hashanah, and our deep time of repentance on Yom Kippur, Sukkot gets us back to the everyday – our needs being met by the earth, and our need to reconnect with those physical needs. We live in the desert forever – we do not reach completion. We get through the desert with the blessing of the bounty of our harvest, when we are lucky to have enough, and through the blessings of our communities coming together to share that harvest and make sure we everyone shares in our bounty.

Fragility, vulnerability, life as wanderers – this is life. As Jews we recognize it and celebrate when we succeed at living with it, as well as the need to make sure we don’t ignore it.

May this year be one where we live well with our fragile world, and guard against the hazards it brings by coming together to bring each other blessings of sustenance.

Thoughts for Yizkor - for our Community Memorial

[Given on Sunday, September 23, 2012, at the Hebrew Cemetery, Charlotte, NC]

The Place Where We are Absolutely Right - Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are absolutely right
flowers will never grow in the spring.
The place where we are absolutely right
is trampled, hardened
like a courtyard.

However
doubts and loves
make the world rise like dough
like a molehill, like a plow.
And a whisper will be heard
in the place where a home was destroyed.
We still relate to those who are gone. We wish they were here to share time and space with us. We talk to them and wish they would talk back. We look back with regret over opportunities missed. Loss remains within us, a hollow space, demanding attention.

As our loss demands attention, so do we resist it – we want it to be simple and complete – to be absolute like the place in Amichai’s poem. A place where we are absolutely right sounds like a comfort. This place could be easier. It would certainly be quieter. Amichai reminds us what that place would look like – it would be truly lifeless. There are no possibilities there. In that place we allow our own small needs to crowd out everything else.

The people we have lost are not absolutely one way or another either, and to hear them we may have to admit that one person may have many sides that we remember.

My father (may his memory be for a blessing) and I used to hotly debate the issues of the day. We knew each other’s positions very well, and often started arguing where we had left off before. After hours of discussion on long car trips between North Carolina and New York we usually managed to discover some common ground – growing closer through our doubts and our love. Over the years, as he fell ill to pancreatic cancer, my father lost interest in these conversations, preferring exchanges that took less effort. I lost those times even before he died. Now that he’s gone I must go past that barren place where nothing grows into my older memories of him in order to connect with a more living time between us.

Instead of working towards that place of absolutes, let us embrace our doubts and loves. Let us live and struggle in our world of grays and colors and shades of partial knowledge. In this world where things grow, things die as well. Our loss grows and changes and we learn and cope.

Over time we all accumulate a bigger cast of characters in our places of loss. As their numbers grow, as our loss increases, so too do those conversations. The ones where we offer one side and have to imagine the other side. These conversations can only happen in the places where we are not always right. Reminiscing with family and friends and imagining the thoughts and ideas of those who are gone allows us to keep them with us, allows doubt and love to live on.

As we enter this new year of 5773, let us bravely enter the areas of loss in our lives together. May we find in our own hollows, in those spaces filled with destroyed homes, the whispers of those who have left us behind, and the responses of we who remain.

In this time of communal memorial, this space filled with repentance and confession, this time of broken hearts and open gates, let us comfort each other. Our doubts and loves shared caringly with each other, our compassion and loss felt together, may help leaven the rising dough of our world. Let us listen to each other whisper, let us find comfort in honoring what has gone before, and building anew together.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah – may we be well inscribed together in the New Year.

Equal rights for bullies!?!?!!? This is not religion!

This morning one of the first things I saw was this article:

Equal Rights for Bullies: Religious Right Comes to the Defense of "Faith-Based" Harassment

I am beyond outraged.

No religious ethos should ever defend the right to harm others as an expression of "freedom of religion".

I cannot believe that this needs to be expressed.

The right to impose one's belief system on someone else, especially by brute force or harassment, is not a right - it is an abuse of someone else's rights.

Religions in our pluralist American society must abide by the laws of that society. If your religion advises bullying as an expression of your piety, please move to a place with a state-sponsored and enforced religion, and leave us alone.

Temple Beth El's Bark Mitzvah - today!

11am-1pm

William R. Davie Park on Pineville Matthews Rd.
Location
Dog park info.

11am - Register for your Bark Mitzvah Certificate
11:20am - Animal parade
11:50am - Mi Sheh-Bark - Blessing of the animals by TBE Rabbis
Noon - Lunch
12:30pm - Games & Contests

The "fee" for participation is 3 cans of cat food/$5 per attendee -  
maxing out at 6 cans of food/$10 per family.
Attendees are invited/expected to bring their own picnic lunch

OUR beneficiary is the Spay/Neuter Charlotte Clinic.  
http://spayneutercharlotte.org

The Dalai Lama on Communitarianism

We are fundamentally interconnected and the Dalai Lama offers clarity on how:
Our good fortune is dependent upon the cooperation and contributions of others. Every aspect of our present well-being is due to hard work on the part of others. As we look around us at the buildings we live and work in, the roads we travel, the clothes we wear, or the food we eat, we have to acknowledge that all are provided by others. None of them would exist for us to enjoy and make use of were it not for the kindness of so many people unknown to us.

Evolution and Religion - Use Them Both!

A great teaching from Rabbi Arthur Green's Radical Judaism: Rethinking God & Tradition (page 22):

The incredibly complex interplay of forces and the thick web of mutual dependency among beings are no less amazing than the distance traversed in this long evolutionary journey. The interrelationships between soil, plants, and insects, or those between climate, foliage, and animal life, all leave us breathless as we begin to contemplate them. It is these very intricacies and complexities that have led the religious fundamentalists to hold fast to the claim that there must be a greater intelligence behind it all, that such complexity can only reflect the planning of a supernatural Mind. But they miss the point of the religious moment here. Our task as religious persons is not to offer counter-scientific explanations for the origin of life. Our task is to notice, to pay attention to, the incredible wonder of it all, and to find God in that moment of paying attention.

Tiferet in Yesod - Day 38 of the Omer

Balanced harmony, Tiferet, in solid balanced foundation, Yesod - at the heart of every building project is the vision of the height it will reach.

When starting out with balance we must hold in our minds the plan for where we might end up, and aim for a higher balance as well. While good projects start with basic ideas, balanced ideas may lead to loftier achievements too.

The image for this: successful tall trees have deeply developed roots.

Hod in Hod - Happy 33rd of the Omer! (from yesterday)

Awesome grace, Hod, in itself - a day on which we recognize that even humility requires stepping back from pride - we aim for humility for its own sale not for any reward in reputation.

And today is LaG b'Omer - the 33rd day of the Omer counting, on which restrictions ease and celebrations take place.

The Omer Counting marks the time between Passover and Shavuot - two important agricultural holidays that also became two important theological holidays in the Jewish calendar.

On the agricultural front, we mark this time as when winter planted grain ripens on the stalk, and is thus vulnerable to being destroyed by heat waves. In an attempt to not disrupt this fragile natural balance, some Jews observe a minor mourning period for the first 33 days of the Omer - from the Second Night of Passover until May 10 this year - and refrain from trimming hair or shaving, as well as abstaining from celebrations. There are multiple traditions about when this period ends, either the 33rd day as the last day, or merely a respite before the true end of the period, on the holiday of Shavuot, or weeks, which is the 49th day of the Omer, 7 weeks after we began, when the grain harvest is in and we can make an offering.

On the theological aspect, these days mark the movement from Passover, when the Israelites were freed from slavery, to Shavuot, when we received the Torah on Mount Sinai - freedom leads to revelation. In that spirit, recognizing that we must prepare ourselves for revelation, the Kabbalaists used the 7 by 7 structure - 7 days of 7 weeks to incorporate the lower seven sefirot of the Tree of Life. This model lays out important pricniples, many of which are paired with their complementary ideas (Chesed, loving kindness, with Gevurah, rigor, for example), and others are their balanced resolutions (like Tiferet, balanced beauty, and Yesod, balanced foundation). Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) identifies these principles as elements essential to living, thinking, and feeling in a way that leads to inspiration and creativity in appreciation of the gift of existence.

So for 16 more days I will continue to count and reflect - questions?