“And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; so the whole age of
Jacob was a hundred and forty seven years. Va’yikr’vu y’mei yisrael lamut,
and the days drew nearer that Israel must die.” The beginning of this week’s
parsha, Vayechi, tells us what happens in the end of the parsha.
However, the language used in the end of the parsha is a little bit
different. There is says that Jacob finished instructing his sons, he
gathered his feet to his bed, vayigvah vaya’ahsef el amav, and he expired
and was gathered to his people. Rashi points out that in this verse it does
not say “vayumat,” and he died—and he tells us that our rabbis say that our
father Jacob never died.
Rashi bases this on a discussion in the Talmud, tractate Ta’anit. R.
Yochanan makes a claim that Jacob didn’t die. His buddy R. Nachman says, “so
what was all the mourning about then?” R. Yochanan explains that there is a
verse in Jeremiah which says: “Therefore fear not, Jacob, My servant, says
the Lord; do not be dismayed, Israel. For I will save you from afar, and
your seed from the land of their captivity.” Just as this verse likens Jacob
to his seed, Israel, than as his seed will be alive, so too will Jacob be
alive.” Jacob lives on through his seed, the people of Israel.
The poetic expression “gathered to his people,” is also a beautiful way
to phrase it. When a person dies, the acts of his life—his children, his
kind deeds, his teachings—are “gathered to his people,” they become a part
of the legacy of his people and give him an enduring life.
In the coming week we will observe the yarhtzeit of one of the great
rabbis of the 20th century: Abraham Joshua Heschel. I never had the zchut,
the merit or honor, of studying with Rabbi Heschel who passed away in 1972.
But his teachings live on—so in a sense Rabbi Heschel has not died, he has
been “gathered to his people.”
Those of you who come regularly on Friday night are familiar with some
of Heschel’s writings, as we have studied some of his teachings about the
Sabbath. What I would like to do this morning is share a few of his
teachings, in a sense “giving him life;” perhaps some of you will be
inspired to read his books.
My thanks to Rabbi Hershel Matt, z”l, who organized excerpts of
Heschel’s writings into a summary of his theology.
Heschel’s writings are filled with a sort of dialectical approach. He
very much believed that the truth is often found in a combination of
diametrically opposed concepts. Heschel wrote: “A necessary condition
affecting human beliefs in philosophy and religion is the paradox. The
source of their paradoxical character has its origin in the essential
polarity of human being.
“To ignore the paradox is to miss the truth.
“Jewish thinking and living can only be adequately understood in terms of
a dialectic pattern, containing opposite or contrasted properties. As in a
magnet, the ends of which have opposite magnetic qualities, these terms are
opposite to one another and exemplify a polarity which lies at the very
heart of Judaism, the polarity of ideas and events, of mitzvah and sin, of
kavvanah and deed, of regularity and spontaneity, of uniformity and
individuality, of halakhah and agadah, of law and inwardness, of love and
fear, of understanding and obedience, of joy and discipline, of the good and
the evil drive, of time and eternity, of this world and the world to come,
of revelation and response, of insight and information, of empathy and
self-expression, of creed and faith, of the word and that which is beyond
words, of man's quest for God and God in search of man. Even God's relation
to the world is characterized by the polarity of justice and mercy,
providence and concealment, the promise of reward and the demand to serve
Him for His sake. Taken abstractedly, all these terms seem to be mutually
exclusive, yet in actual rising they involve each other; the separation of
the two is fatal to both.
“Since each of the two principles moves in the opposite direction,
equilibrium can only be maintained if both are of equal force. But such a
condition is rarely attained. Polarity is an essential trait of all things.
Tension, contrast, and contradiction characterize all of reality.
“However, there is a polarity in everything except God. For all tension
ends in God. He is beyond all dichotomies.”
I would consider this a fundamental tenet of Judaism. Do not oversimplify.
To understand the truth, we must be willing to hold contradictory notions in
mind. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The test of a first-rate
intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the
same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Maybe this is why Jews
are so smart: as Heschel points out for us, Judaism requires that we be able
to hold two opposed ideas in mind and still function.
Those opposed ideas in Judaism are so strong, that sometimes we have to
simply give up on trying to figure out the nature of God and the universe
intellectually. When I read Heschel’s description of the way that we can
approach God, it was truly one of those “lightbulb going off” moments—I
realized that he was right, and saw what was wrong in my attempts to
understand God or draw close to God to that point.
Heschel tells us “Among the many things that religious tradition holds in
store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability
to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take
things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root
of sin.
“Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious
man's attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to his
spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of
things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his
ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of
natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things.
However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at
the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say,
"This is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalms 118:23).
“As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is
an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want
of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our
happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth
living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.
“Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. It is the result of what man
does with his higher incomprehension. The greatest hindrance to such
awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental clichés.
Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and
notions, is therefore a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that
which is.”
“Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.” I wish every teacher would
have this phrase etched into their brains. All too often, when we teach, we
take the mystery out of things. All too often, as we learn, the sense of
wonder vanishes. But it does not have to be that way. We can cultivate that
appreciation of wonder—we can cherish it, not repress it. As a flight
instructor, I can give you a very good explanation of the aerodynamics of
flight—Bernouli’s principle and so on. I know it so well that when I fly I
can practically see the “big H” for high pressure below the wing and the
“big L” for low pressure above the wing. But I try not to let it stop me
from feeling “wow! Amazing, God!” when my little Cessna actually leaves the
ground behind.
Being able to feel a sense of wonder at the beauty of a sunset is a surer
path toward awareness of the divine than reading a book of philosophy. That
sense of wonder can lead us to an appreciation for the Creator of such
beauty. Our liturgy tries to keep that sense of wonder alive—in the Amidah,
three times a day, we thank God for the miracles that are with us daily—the
miracle that we are alive, the miracle of the good we see in the world.
Heschel points out that the mystery of the Divine is implanted in us:
“There are two ways in which the Bible speaks of the creation of man. In the
first chapter of the Book of Genesis, which is devoted to the creation of
the physical universe, man is described as having been created in the image
and likeness of God. In the second chapter, which tells us of the
commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, man is
described as having been formed out of the dust of the earth. Together,
image and dust express the polarity of the nature of man. He is formed of
the most inferior stuff in the most superior image.
“Man, then, is involved in a polarity of a divine image and worthless
dust. He is a duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous aridity, a vision
of God and a mountain of dust. It is because of his being dust that his
iniquities may be forgiven, and it is because of his being an image that his
righteousness is expected.”
So we have it in us to reach the highest heights—to connect with the
vision of God within us—and we have it in us to sink to the lowest depths,
to be nothing but dust.
In his writings on the Sabbath, Heschel gives us great guidance on how to
connect with the Godly aspect of our nature. He reminds us that “In the
tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man
may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day,
the Sabbath, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical
affairs as well as of attachment to the spirit.” Heschel teaches that “The
meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a
week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to
become attuned to holiness in time.” We create a space for the Divine and
holy in us by making time for it on Shabbat.
Heschel was a realist about how people have applied these two aspects of
their nature, the high and the low. To those who would maintain that the
Bible stands for optimism and hope, Heschel responds: “There is, however,
very little evidence to support such a view. With the exception of the first
chapter of the Book of Genesis, the rest of the Bible does not cease to
refer to the sorrow, sins, and evils of this world.
“There is one line that expresses the mood of the Jewish man throughout
the ages: "The earth is given into the hand of the wicked (Job 9:24).6
“How does the world look in the eyes of God? Are we ever told that the
Lord saw that the righteousness of man was great in the earth, and that He
was glad to have made man on the earth? The general tone of the biblical
view of history is set after the first ten generations: "The Lord saw how
great was man's wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind
was nothing but evil all the time. And the Lord regretted that He had made
man on earth, and His heart was saddened" (Genesis 6:5-6; cf. 8:21). One
great cry resounds throughout the Bible: The wickedness of man is great on
the earth.”
What made Heschel a truly great man, a mensch, and not just a great
teacher, was that he walked the talk. He lived what he preached. About the
wickedness of man and the evils in the world Heschel said “At the end of
days, evil will be conquered by the One; in historic times evils must be
conquered one by one.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel did exactly that—he engaged in the battle to
conquer evils “one by one.” Outside of Jewish circles, Heschel is widely
known for having marched together with Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to
Montgomery to support voting rights for Blacks—facing not insignificant
dangers. When the march first tried to get going on March 7, 1965, they only
got about six blocks before being attacked by state and local lawmen with
billy clubs and tear gas who drove them back into Selma. When Heschel showed
up for the rescheduled march on March 21, who knew what to expect? But he
did not let that deter him.
Sometime later, Heschel said "When I marched in Selma, my feet were
praying." As we continue to gather Heschel to his people through studying
his ideas, may this one be his most important legacy—not just to teach us
how to approach God with prayer, but to teach us how to pray with our feet.
To teach us how to pray by making the world a better a place.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Leff
It is a great mitzvah to serve God with great joy,
always...R. Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4