There's something about winters, for sure.
Just yesterday I found out that my college friend, Andrea Oliveri, had died after a long battle with breast cancer. And last winter, my ROI friend, Dave Burnett, died in a hiking accident in Petra, a loss which - after twelve months' time - is still felt.
Jewish tradition says we're supposed to hear these pieces of news, of people lost before their time, and say "blessed is the true judge," uttering praise of God's reasoning even when we don't understand it. We're supposed to be comforted by the knowledge that there's a plan even if we don't know what it is, or something like that. Call me crazy, but personally, I don't find five words like those (in English - Hebrew presents an even terser three) adequate, or even helpful, because in a time of loss and mourning, nothing ever is.
Dave died in January 2008 and Andrea this past Friday. But because of the way the Jewish calendar works out, the Torah-reading timeline presents an intersection of sorts centering on the Torah portion known as "Mishpatim," roughly and inadequately translated as "laws," and often known as the "patron portion" of lawyers and those in the justice profession.
A year ago, I delivered a dvar Torah (words of Torah, or a mini-sermon of sorts) at the Skirball Center in New York on the Torah portion, dedicating my talk in Dave's memory as I tried to cope with the loss that was still so fresh. (If you want to hear the whole thing, download the podcast on iTunes.)
This is an excerpt from that talk which centers on the response the Jewish people gave when offered the Torah - "we will do, and we will listen." This statement puzzles readers, because usually the instinct is to listen to someone and then, if the suggested course of action seems reasonable, take action. It speaks to the concept of life's cycle, to the role of community and the role that our history - including both pain and love - plays in creating our future. I offer it here in memory of Dave, Andrea, and all the people who are taken from us too early.
Last Shabbat was Parshat Yitro, which contains the giving of the Ten Commandments. There’s a thunderous voice from atop a mountain, and Shofar blasts and lightning—an impossibly loud sound and light show that made the people so frightened that they feared for their lives, and begged Moses to be the intermediary. In reading the tributes being posted on a Facebook page in memory of Dave, I learned that Yitro had been Dave’s bar mitzvah parshah, which just made sense—he represented the essence of Jewish peoplehood, the energy of Sinai, the eager and enthusiastic embrace of Jewish life and Jewish law. And yet, in the text and in life, especially this year, the law of Yitro exists amid extreme chaos and fearsome noise.
Mishpatim, by contrast, is like stereo instructions. It lays out the laws with little sentiment or emotion. According to Chabad.org, the Parshah of Mishpatim contains fifty-three mitzvot -- 23 imperative commandments and 30 prohibitions. It’s also a mini-crash course in Jewish observance, as well as a reminder of God’s expectations: avoiding prejudice, adhering to a justice system, observing Shabbat and the pilgrimage festivals, etc.
But at the end of the dry legalese, it cycles back to the continuation of the revelation at Sinai and concludes with a remarkable statement of free-will commitment by a formerly enslaved people. We will do, and we will accept.
My friends and I… the mini-Jewish people, if you will…have been dealing with the loss we suffered. In our shattered, fearful state, we feel acutely connected to the other people who are also grieving as we all try to find our respective manuals. We feel the chaos and fear that it is too much, that it will consume us. In contrasting moments, we feel robotic, all too clinical, like we’re going through perfunctory motions, following a preordained structure. This may provide us with a routine, but has nothing to do with us or our free choice.
Responses to biblical texts vary as our emotional states do. Some moments of intense industriousness bring achievement if we can close off our emotion and focus on letters-making-words-making-sentences. But all it takes is the wrong word to provoke the associations that make things unravel again. We’re alternately grateful for and resentful of the structure, and look for the additional meanings that will allow everything to congeal into something that makes sense.
Two different people undoubtedly read the same verses differently. But even the same person can read the same verses differently at different times in his or her life. That’s the point to going over it every year, reading it again with your same literal eyes, but with the metaphorical eye that you’ve developed in that year of experiences, relationships and struggles. That’s the cycle. Sometimes, the meaning eludes you. And in other moments the resonance strikes a chord that both enlightens and inspires you.
After the last two weeks and this study of Mishpatim, I still have many questions. And I certainly am not any closer to getting past the sadness of losing someone so vital, not just to me and my life, but to the entire Jewish world. What I’m trying to take away from the fact that Mishpatim’s dryness culminates in the acceptance of the whole package, is that sometimes it's not about understanding things before acting - it's the doing that leads to understanding.
And we have to hope that with every day that passes—even if it feels like fear or despair or grief—that we can see a greater context. We’re cycling back, not just toward that elusive understanding, but through our acceptance of the whole package. We’re moving forward, shaped by the entirety of our past, as we move toward the inspiration of revelation and the loving embrace of community.
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