Parasha Bo

Crossing Over to Idolatry

Two events stunned the world of sports this week, both off the playing field. This week Lance Armstrong, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, admitted to what he had adamantly denied over the course of his illustrious career -- that he was a user of performance enhancing drugs while he was winning seven Tour de France cycling events. He also acknowledged that he sued others for defamation of character when he knew they were in fact telling the truth about his performance enhancing drug use. The second event from the world of sports was that of Notre Dame football star and Heisman Trophy candidate Manti Te'o. His story of falling in love with a young Stanford Student who died of lukemia at the beginning of this season was revealed this week as a hoax. We are waiting now to see whether he was the victim of a hoax, as he claims, or the perpetrator of a hoax.  Time will tell. What we do know is that Notre Dame knew of the hoax on December 26 but said nothing to the media about it as the media continued to write and talk about the courage of Manti Te'o in the run-up to the national title game.

What does Judaism have to say about this?  In our Thursday morning study group we are studying the prophets. The prophets of ancient Israel are always inveighing against idolatry. We have had some interesting discussions about idolatry and what it is. We usually associate idolatry with pagans making images of their gods that they then worship. The prophets ridicule these heathens. Their ridicule is captured in Psalm 115. Our, (Jewish) G-d is in heaven, governing the universe, while

Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands.

They have a mouth and cannot speak, eyes and cannot see.

They have ears and cannot hear.

A nose that cannot smell.

They have hands that cannot feel,

Feet than cannot walk.......

As we discussed in our class, the idolatry isn't only about the images that people made that represented their gods. They surely did not mistake the image for the real thing. The idol, after all, only represented the powerful god. They knew it was not the powerful god itself. Idolatry is also found in the values that those gods represented.  As we can see in the sorry episodes of Lance Armstrong and Manti Te'o, idolatry continues to be alive and well in our own culture.

For idolatry means putting our values above the values the Torah teaches. The danger of idolatry in our society lies in our worship of winning at any cost, worship of the money that comes with winning, the fame, the power, the admiration and the influence that comes with being recognized as a winner in our culture. When Lance Armstrong and Notre Dame placed winning above truth, above honesty, we could say they were engaging in idolatrous behavior, just as surely as were the Canaanites who sacrificed their children to Molech in the Vally of Gehinnom in Biblical times. 

There was another story in the world of sports this week, one that did not get nearly the coverage of the Armstrong or Te'o stories.  Eleven year old Estee Ackerman, ranked fourth in the United States in her age bracket in ping pong, was disqualified from the 2012 US National Table Tennis Championship finals. Estee was not discovered to have been taking performance enhancing drugs. Estee was not injured. She had not been found cheating in any way. She had trained hard for six months, yet chose not to show for her finals match. The reason? Her match fell on a Friday night, the Shabbas. She told the New York Post, "Ping pong is important to me, but my religion of Judaism is also very important to me."

We can all learn something from Estee Ackerman. We can love what we do, and we can all try to be the very best we can be. We can gain great satisfaction, even honor, and sometimes fame and fortune, in developing our talents to the greatest degree possible.  To work hard toward a goal is an admirable quality to have. But when we are willing to achieve that goal by paying any price; when the cost of achievement is transgressing of the moral values that Judaism teaches, we are trespassing into the area of idol worship. "You shall love the Lord you G-d with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might," says the Torah.  When we love something more than we love pleasing G-d, we are crossing over into idolatry. 

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

 

                        

 

Parasha Vaera

Turning Points

 

When it comes to forgiveness from G-d, is there a point of no return?

We are taught repeatedly in Judaism that G-d wants our repentance.  We read that the gates of forgiveness by G-d are always open.  That even if a person repents the day before their death, that repentance is accepted.

This idea is comforting to some, but makes others angry.  What about Hitler? If Hitler repented, if Hitler asked forgiveness from G-d, would G-d have accepted his repentance?  Would G-d accept Osama Bin Laden's repentance, had he repented while still alive?  What about the perpetrator of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School?  Can we forgive him?  Should G-d? 

One answer to this question is contained in our Parasha for this week.  It is in the account of the ten plagues.  After each of the first five plagues, the Torah states that Pharaoh "hardened his heart and Pharaoh would not let the people go."  From that time on, after each plague the Torah states, "G-d hardened Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh would not let the people go."  The objection is then raised – if G-d hardened Pharaoh's heart, how can it be fair that G-d punished him?  If G-d, as it were, deprived Pharaoh of his free will to make decisions, is it just that Pharaoh be punished?  By the last five plagues, it seems that G-d was not allowing Pharaoh to change his mind, to soften his stubbornness, to return to G-d in full repentance for what he had done.  What's going on?

Maimonides, in his "Laws of Teshuvah" gives us his answer. He says that is it possible that a person sins so greatly and so often that G-d decides to lock the gates of repentance to that person.  In this way, the person is punished and is must suffer from the consequences of the wickedness that he has done here on earth.  G-d gave Pharaoh five opportunities to repent, and each time Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  Those five chances would be the only ones Pharaoh gets.  After that, G-d makes it impossible for him to change, and Pharaoh's free will is actually taken from him.  The midrash states, "Because the Holy Blessed One saw that Pharaoh did not repent after each of the first five plagues, G-d decreed, 'From now on even if he wants to repent I am hardening his heart, in order that he may be punished for every injustice he has committed.'"  For Pharaoh there is no forgiveness, no mercy. He has forfeited the right to turn back from his evil ways. 

Entire societies can also forfeit their ability to turn back and repent.  When the prophet Isaiah is commissioned by G-d in the middle of the 8^th century BCE to speak to the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, he is given a curious task:

Dull that people's mind/ stop its ears/ and seal its eyes

Lest seeing with its eyes/ and hearing with its ears/ It also grasps with its mind/and repent and heal itself.

In other words, Isaiah is supposed to fail. He is not to help the people understand the danger to which their behavior is leading them!  G-d does not desire their repentance – at least not now. The Book of Chronicles explains this. G-d tried to get the Jewish people to change their ways. "G-d had sent word to them through his messengers daily without fail, for He had pity on His people……But they mocked the messengers of G-d and disdained His words and taunted the prophets until the anger of G-d grew beyond remedy."  (Chronicles 36:15-16)

I know what you are asking: Why would G-d want to send a prophet to the people only to hope that the prophet would not succeed?  Why does Moses go to Pharaoh with the last five plagues when it is already pre-determined that Pharaoh is beyond listening to him?  Maimonides says that this is to teach us that there is a point of no return.  There is a point when we must suffer the full consequences of our behavior, with no mercy from an otherwise merciful G-d. That contrary to what we may believe, G-d's patience is not infinite -- we do not have all the time in the world to mend our ways.

I was thinking about this when it comes to some of our societal issues.  Apparently it is widely felt that Sandy Hook represented a "turning point" in our nation's response to gun violence.  Did it represent, instead, a point of no return?  Have things gotten so out of hand in our society, have we failed to address this problem for so many years, after so many warnings, that we have forfeited the ability to turn back as a society. That we cannot change, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. I hope not – time will tell. The same is true of so many issues –wars, torture, poverty, pollution, state and national debt, to name a few – that are the plagues of our time.  How long can we go on ignoring them before there is no turning back?  I think the Torah is telling us – don't think that G-d will save us from our own folly. Heed the warnings before it is too late.  Where are the prophets of today? Perhaps they are among the scientists, the economists, the teachers, the writers and the thinkers whose words and warnings we choose to ignore.

We learn from this week's parasha the sobering message that it can be too late to change -- That there is a point of no return.  Who knows when that point may be?  The opportunity for change should never be taken for granted.  Who knows the exact moment when we will not be able to turn back, when the die is cast and the door is closed forever.

 

Shabbbat Shalom

 

 

 

Parasha Shemot

To Your Own Self Be True

There was once a king who ruled his kingdom with wisdom and compassion. As he approached the end of his days, everyone in the kingdom wondered who would be the next ruler. Would it be one of his children? An adviser? A general?

As the king lay on his deathbed, he announced who he had chosen to be the next king.  It was, he announced, the court Jester.

The Jester? Everyone in the kingdom thought this must be a joke. The King's advisors tried to talk him out of it. But the King was firm in his decision. When the King died, the Jester was crowned the new King.

No one knew, of course, how this would work out. But over time it turned out to have been a brilliant choice. The jester was every bit as wise, as compassionate, and as insightful as the old king had been. Everyone in the kingdom came to love him.

There was a mystery surrounding the new King, however. Every so often he would retreat to a distant room in the palace, a room to which only he had the key. For a few hours he would lock himself in that room. And then he would return to the throne and resume his duties. What was he doing in that room- Praying, meditating, thinking?  No one knew.

Once an ambassador came from a far-off land. The ambassador spent many hours with the king. He grew to appreciate the king's wisdom and his kindness.

When the ambassador noticed that the king occasionally disappeared into his distant room, he too wondered, "What does the king do in that locked room?" So one day when the king retreated to his room, the ambassador secretly followed behind. When the king closed the door, the ambassador crouched down and peered through the keyhole. There he took in the king's great secret.

In the privacy of the room, the king took off his crown and his royal robes and put on the costume of a jester. Around and around the room he danced the jester's dance, making funny faces and singing the silly songs of a jester. Then he stood before a great mirror and recited to himself: "Never forget who you are. You may look and sound and act like the king, but you are only the jester. You are only the jester pretending to be the king. Never forget who you are."

Now the ambassador understood it all. He understood the source of the king's deep wisdom, kindness, and humility. He vowed his everlasting loyalty to the king. And he vowed to keep the king's secret.

Over the years the king and the ambassador grew close. One day when they were alone, the ambassador confessed what he had done and what he had seen. "I promise you on my life that I will never reveal your secret," he declared. "But there is one thing I have never been able to figure out: Of all the people in the royal court whom the old king could have chosen to succeed him, why did he choose you? Why did he choose the jester?"

The king smiled at his friend and replied, "And who do you think he was before he became king?"

I first heard that story told by Rabbi Ed Feinstein.[1] I remembered it this week as we begin the Book of Exodus and read about Moses' birth and upbringing. Like the Jester in the story, Moses never forgot who he was, and where he came from. Moses was the son of a Hebrew man and woman, the Torah tells us, who was raised in the palace of the Pharaoh from infancy as the son of the Pharaoh's daughter, who drew him out of the waters of the Nile.  How was it possible, growing up in the palace as he did, the grandson of the Pharaoh that he did not identify as an Egyptian?  According to the Torah, his mother, Jocheved, was his nursemaid.  The rabbis speculate that Jocheved must have spent enough time with him in his formative years that she inculcated him with Jewish beliefs and a Jewish identity.  She imbued him with a love and loyalty for his people, so that he never became an Egyptian prince, but remained, at his core, a loyal Jew.

Such is the importance of our education of our children.  Our goal in educating our children is to inculcate in them such a firm sense of who they are that no matter what they become when they grow up – a doctor, a lawyer, a writer, a dancer, a teacher, an architect or engineer, a factory worker or a mechanic – they will never forget that they are Jewish. They will be, at their core, Jewish men and women.  

Shabbat Shalom

 

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[1] It is retold in his book Capturing the Moon: Classic and Modern Jewish Tales Behrman House 2009 from which this story, with modification, is taken.