Divrei Torah

This week’s reading features angels climbing up and down a ladder – a scene which makes us very proud at Beth El, because it took place at – Beth El.  Or did it? In fact most rabbinic authorities and midrashic commentary locates the scene at Moriah, a hill in Jerusalem, the place of the Akeidah, where the Temples would be built, where, according to several other Midrashim, Hagar received her vision of an angel.  But if it took place at Moriah, why does the text tell us that Jacob named the place “Beth El” – a town many miles northeast of Jerusalem? The Midrash suggests that on the night the angels appeared, God ordained a miracle, and the Earth folded, so Moriah landed on top of Beth El.

This weird Midrash highlights one of the two ways the Jacob’s ladder scene connects Jews to the Land of Israel. One connection is religious.  This is a land where we discover angels, where we feel the presence of God; it’s a portal to holiness, a place of spiritual visions.  At the same time, God – at the top of the ladder – tells Jacob his descendants will inherit the land – that this will be the place where they will fulfill their natural national aspirations.  So this one short scene dramatizes two roles Israel plays in the life of the Jewish people: religious and national.

For many years these were the two great streams in Zionism, the competing visions of the secular Theodore Herzl – the nationalist – and the great mystic Rav Kook – the religious visionary. The good news is that these two approaches are no longer mutually exclusive.  Many people, including myself, feel both powerful religious feelings, but also great nationalistic sentiments whenever visiting Israel, or even thinking about Israel.  Israel today is both the center of my religious consciousness, and the full flowering of my national aspirations.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that neither approach works very well for many, probably most young American Jews. For me, Israel might be a place of angels – of spiritual awakening – but when I describe the feeling to students, most have no idea what I’m talking about.  When it comes to religious feelings, either you get it or you don’t, and, in any case, you have to visit Israel to feel the full impact, and the challenge nowadays is getting younger Jews to visit at all.   But nationalistic sentiment is also losing its force.  The young Jews we work with today are mostly 3^rd or 4^th generation American.  Their country is the United States.  Any patriotism they feel is directed toward their actually home, not their ancestral home.  All this, of course, is complicated by the fact that most of the news they receive about Israel is either bad, or disturbing. So – whereas when I was in college, virtually all of the active young Jews I knew spent large amounts of time in Israel, nowadays many active Jews will often go to Africa or Latin America.  National feelings towards Israel have diminished, along with religious sentiment, resulting overall in weaker connections to Israel.

But there is one other possible approach, which our reading suggests.  God promises that the land will belong to Jacob’s descendants, but God also says “the families of Earth will be blessed by you.”  You, God says, in your land, will be a source of blessing for the rest of the world.  What could that mean? For me, the blessing that benefits the world is Jewish ethics – our Jewish moral code – the “light unto the nations.”  And the only place in the world where Jewish ethics can be practiced every day – where they can become part of the fabric of the culture – is in Israel, the only Jewish country.

Every survey of young Jews reminds us of their passionate attachment to ethics – to Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.  It’s consistently the idea which most excites them about Judaism.  We should teach our young Jews that Israel is not just the place of your national aspirations, or the fulfillment of your religious dreams, but it’s also the great home for your Jewish values.  In America, we struggle over the rights of workers, and the proper mix of taxation and budget cuts.  Israel grapples with these issues using Jewish texts, Jewish ideas, Jewish values.  Jewish values also underlie much of the discussion in Israel on the treatment of minorities, and immigration, even war and peace.  Judaism is a nation and a religion, but it’s also a 3000 year old ethical system, an ethics which has been a blessing to the world. Maybe it’s also the key to reviving Zionism in the next generation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Philip Graubart

This week, I’d like to use this space to urge you personally to attend our Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat with Rabbi Naomi Levy, on Dec. 9-10^th. Rabbi Levy is one of the most talented and dynamic rabbis in Southern California. She’s written several best-selling books on Jewish spirituality, all of which combine serious Torah learning with poignant and pointed observations on confronting life’s deepest challenges.  Her most recent book (an Oprah selection!) Hope Will Find You tells the extremely moving story of her young daughter’s struggle with a serious illness.  I found myself in tears several times reading the book, and in awe of Rabbi Levy’s ability to teach and inspire hope under the most difficult circumstances.  “Hope Will Find You” is, in fact, the theme of the Shabbat.

I’ve known Rabbi Levy since rabbinical school.  Even when we were students, she was the most creative among us, the one who always came with the unique, inspiring, and absolutely true angle on any particular Jewish text.  I’ve continued to learn from her writings over the years, and I very much look forward, once again, to learning from her in person.  I hope you’ll join me – hopefully for all the weekend’s events, if not for one or two.  She’ll be speaking at a dinner on Friday night, Dec. 9, at services on Saturday morning, December 10, and at lunch the same day.  Please go to our website to register (www.cbe.org).

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving!

Rabbi Philip Graubart

In this week’s reading, when Isaac meets his new bride, he’s just come from a village called Be’er Lachai Ro’i – “The Well of My Vision of the Living One.”  What is this provocatively named place, and what was Isaac doing there?  Sensitive Biblical readers will recognize that this is where Hagar received her first visitation from an angel; in fact Hagar is the one who gave the place its name. So Rashi suggests that Hagar ended up moving there, and Isaac came to visit her – his step-mother – and his half brother Ishmael.  Later, Isaac also moves there.

Ramban, as usual, goes a little deeper, and says that Isaac went there frequently to pray, because it was a place of “visions.” According to Ramban, this was where Abraham received his most powerful vision of God.  Ramban is also no doubt referring to the several midrashim that teach that this was Moriah – the place where Isaac was nearly sacrificed – and became the site of both Temples.  So for Ramban it’s a holy place – a place of visions – because of its history, its connection to past glories and traumas.

Targum Yonatan says it was place of the primordial “study house of Shem” – a legendary Torah academy founded, according to the Midrash, by Noah’s son Shem.  Yonatan expands the name, calling it “The Well of Revelation of the Most High, Living and Enduring, Who Sees, but is not Seen,” which suggests that this is a study house devoted to mystical contemplation – to seeing and understanding that which cannot be seen.  For the Targum Yonatan, there’s something intrinsically sacred about the place – something ancient and Godly.

Before unpacking each of these suggestions, it’s important to go back to the place’s original story from two readings ago.  If you remember, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, mistreats the pregnant Hagar, so she flees to the desert.  An angel meets her there, and tells her to return to Sarah, and submit to the torture, because the son she will bear – Abraham’s son – will become the father of a mighty nation. Hagar first names God, calling Him “The God of my Vision (El Ro’i),” and then names the place – “The Well of My Vision of the Living One.” So for Hagar the place offers vision – which I might interpret as perspective, or a sense of mission.  This is the place where Hagar “saw” her mission in life – to raise Ishmael in Abraham’s house.  It’s also the place which gave her perspective, where she learned to take the long view of her suffering.  You’ll get over the torture, the angel teaches her.  And it will be worth it.  Just give it time.   No wonder she (and Isaac) moved back there when she got the chance. It was her sacred place, a place of constant inspiration.

What, for us, creates a sacred place? For Isaac and Hagar, the Well was a place connected to their deep past experiences, both glorious and traumatic. Many Jews nowadays receive visions in Jerusalem, or other parts of Israel – and many end up moving there, simply because our Holy Land is a place of continuing inspiration.  Others experience inspiration at darker spots, like Treblinka, or Auschwitz – though none of us would move to these places.  In our personal lives, we might receive vision, or inspiration at cemeteries where loved ones are buried, or the houses we grew up, or the schools we attended, or the place where we met our first love, or experienced loss for the first time.  Certain places in our lives, for all sorts of reasons, provoke our most powerful contemplations.  Like Isaac and Hagar, we should seek out these places, if only in our imaginations. They are endless sources of wisdom.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Philip Graubart