4th Year HUC-JIR Sermon
At Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, each rabbinic student is given the opportunity to deliver a sermon to his/her teachers and colleagues. When my turn came, I wrestled out loud with a problem that still disturbs me forty years later: how can one combine a critical/analytical approach to the Torah with a religious/faithful relationship with the text?
February 9, 1984 HUC Chapel Sermon
The Baal Shem Tov told the story of a musician whose playing was so beautiful that the king ordered him to play his favorite melody several times a day. After a while, the musician grew tired of the melody and lost his passion for playing. So a man was brought in off the street, and, for this fresh audience, the musician played, as though for the first time. Then a time came when there were no more new listeners to be found on the street. So the musician was blinded, and thereafter whenever the king sought to hear his melody, he would say: “Here comes someone who hasn’t heard you play before!” And the musician would play his tune with the greatest joy.
It’s a strange parable. What happens to the musician when he loses his eyes? What is the meaning of sightlessness?
My answer begins with this week’s Torah portion. Moses is on Mt. Sinai, receiving the laws regarding the clothing of the priests. The Children of Israel, waiting at the foot of the mountain, are not even mentioned. But Moses has been gone for weeks now, and the Children of Israel are getting restless. When in next week’s portion, Moses fails to appear at the promised moment, our people were seized with panic. God had led us out into the desert and then left us——with no cloud, no pillar of fire, and no Moses. No one to follow and nothing to see.
God had put out our eyes--removed the visible signs of His presence——and we were terrified. So we ordered Aaron to make us a god who would go before us. The golden calf is a story of our inability to be with God without our eyes....of our need for a god we can see.
But what does it mean to lose our eyes? What is the importance of sightlessness?
In Midrash, strange things can happen. A calf can become an elephant; the Children of Israel can become five Hindu blind men.
The first Hindu grabs the elephant’s leg, and declares: “An elephant is like a tree.”
The second finds the elephant’s tail, and announces: “An elephant is like a rope.”
The third presses his hand to the elephant’s side, and says the elephant is like a wall.
The fourth holds the elephant’s trunk, and believes the elephant is like a serpent.
And the last finds the elephant’s ear, and his elephant is like the leaf of a banana tree.
Are the blind men fools? It depends how you read the story. Why, after all, do these blind men travel together and share impressions with each other, if not because their condition has taught them how little each of them actually knows of the world. They know the redemptive power of their community—-something a seeing man watching them cannot understand. He laughs at them, thinking in his arrogance that he knows immediately the true nature of the elephant.
But isn’t it possible that the blind men who travel together and who listen to each other, weave together a richer truth than the self—confident seeing man can know? And to return to my starting point, might not their faith, ——in each other and in their way of knowing—-have survived the disappearance of Moses, pillar and cloud in the wilderness? Their dignified collective groping stands in stark contrast to our people panic during oto ha-ma’aseh, that incident. At the foot of the mountain, in a moment of dread, we were no longer a covenantal community, but a mob of terrified individuals, each one clamoring for a god each could see.
But the golden calf was not the first breaking of covenantal community; the seed of the story of the golden calf was planted back at the beginning of time——with Adam and Eve and the first disobedience.
“The woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a desirable thing for the eyes, and enticing was the tree for understanding. She took from the fruit and ate and gave also to her husband with her and he ate. And the eyesof both of them were opened.” Their eyes were opened, and the whole Creation was shaken.
“Ayeka?!” God cried to them. “Where are you?” In that moment, the first children were lost from their father, and also from their mother: “The earth will be cursed on your account, and with trouble you shall eat from her all the days of your life.”
Perhaps worst of all, Adam and Eve were separated from each other. Their eyes were opened, they saw each other naked, and they became self and other.
According to Rabbi Soleveitchik, Adam and Eve in the garden were the original covenantal community. This companionship is attained, he teaches, through an act of surrender. Hence, when Eve was born, “the Eternal God caused an overpowering sleep to fall upon Adam.” Adam met Eve through the surrender of falling asleep, through closing his eyes. And their covenantal community was broken when he and Eve ate from the fruit which caused their eyes to be made clear.
B’chol dor vador in every generation, we relive these stories. Thus Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge foreshadowed the sin of the golden calf. Once again, in the Wilderness of Sinai, we could not handle our blindness, would not accept limits to our knowledge. We wrenched open our eyes, and caused our faith community to fall to pieces.
B’chol dor vador the first disobedience is still recurring, and the Garden of Eden still exists. God does allow us to reenter the covenant of Eden. Two lovers can kiss, forget their separateness, and——in the words of our marriage ceremony—-become as the first lovers in the Garden of Eden. And the ot, the sign of that covenant, is that in a good kiss——we close our eyes.
Yishakeni minshikot pihu let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. So begins the Song of Songs, with longing for the Garden...and longing also for Sinai, where we stood beneath the Hupah with God and God kissed us with Torah. But for all their longing, the rabbis did not search for the physical Mount Sinai, nor for the Garden of Eden, for that matter, because they believed that both experiences transcend time and space. We are still awaking in Eden. We are still standing in the embrace of Sinai.
I believe that article of Jewish faith.....usually. My faith is shaken, ironically, here at school. It sometimes seems as though, if we are still under the Hupah at Sinai, we are trying to kiss God with our eyes open. We do engage in the study of Torah, but from the perspective of a powerful, perilous critical approach. There are days when that approach leaves me feeling karet——cut off——from my covenantal community.
How should I cope with the knowledge that Moses and Abraham were not monotheists, but believed in many gods, of whom Yahweh was--hopefully?—-the most powerful. Or with the knowledge that the Second Temple was a typical Mediterranean cultic shrine, identical for all intents and purposes to those of the ancient pagan cults? This knowledge alienates me from the texts and symbols of our people.
Worst of all, once it is inside of me, I don’t know how to get rid of it! I don’t know what to do with the feeling that this knowledge has opened my eyes and left me naked. I would not dare, and would not want, to put out my own eyes. There is an invigorating toughness and honesty about our method which I love and am proud of. Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha-olam, ha-ma’avir shey-na mey-ey-nai. You are blessed, God, Majesty of the Universe, who wipes sleep from my eyes. But lately God, I’ve been feeling a bit sleep-deprived. It’s one thing to wake up after a 30-centuries-long sleep; it’s another never to be able to fall asleep again. So I have been looking for a guide back to the middle path, some piece of wisdom which will help me appreciate the historical/critical approach and its insights, but then allow me to return to my religious life with my love for our text and symbols intact. That middle path leads back, once more, to the Garden of Eden.
The commentators noticed that Eve told the snake that she was forbidden to eat or even touch the Tree of Knowledge, when God’s original commandment had been simply not to eat the fruit of that tree. God said nothing about touching the— fruit. Had Adam and Eve only understood, comments the Ramban, God’s intention was that they shouldtouch, maybe even should caress the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But then they should have gone on to eat of Etz HaHayim, Torah, the Tree of Life.
Our studies here bring us to both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life; the critical study of the science of Judaism and Talmud Torah. And RaMBaN reminds us of that which is so easy to forget——we don’t need to choose between them. God has given them both to sustain us.
But Ramban also warns us against Adam and Eve’s mistake; too often we are content to remain at the Tree of Knowledge, munching the apples of history, anthropology, sociology and philology…. We stop there because these are the familiar disciplines, things to know which are taught and studied at all colleges and universities. The Tree of Life offers us a different and stranger kind of knowledge. Etz Hayim Hi LaMahazikim Bah; it is a tree we hold onto for dear life. To eat its fruit is to know dependency and vulnerability, wisdoms we have lost.
RaMBaN’s interpretation of the story of the Trees of Eden does point to a middle path——one on which the critical method and Talmud Torah are not in competition, but complement and enrich each other. If we have left that path, as I’m afraid we have, it is in favoring and trusting too much in the critical method. It is hubris to try to live with our eyes perpetually wide open. And ultimately, it is exhausting. We are human and need to rest.
In Bible class yesterday, Dr. Orlinsky told one of my fellow L.A.—transfers that, “For a new guy in class, you’ve already said too much,” and his words are ringing in my ears now. But I’d like to ask those of you that are willing now, to close your eyes for a minute.
By closing our eyes——not permanently——but for part of our twenty-four hours, we open ourselves to a knowledge older and more profound than that we can attain alone. In that darkness, distant voices come to us more clearly.....Hillel,.....Ruth,... Miriam,.... Moses,.... arguing, weeping, laughing voices rolling together into the thunderous voice of God upon the mountain.
And in that darkness, we may hear our own heart whisper a response, a kol d’mama daka a still, small voice...the melody of an eyeless musician, singing.