| Why live spiritually? Why live as a Jew – or, for that matter, in any community or system of faith or doctrine? These are questions for the ages, ones that modernity places in particularly sharp focus. They’re worth wrestling with, especially now. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Behukotai 5784 (2024)
What good is spiritual life, or Jewish life, or life paths in any religion or system? It’s a question I asked in my very first High Holy Day sermon for our congregation, using edgy words of my friend R. Irwin Kula: “If we’d hire Judaism as our employee, what jobs would we hire Judaism to do, and how well does Judaism do those jobs today”? Together we evolved first responses that became our High Holy Day themes – and our themes for this whole year:
This week’s Torah portion, which rounds out the Book of Leviticus, puts this question before us yet again: what’s the point of all this?
The timing is prescient. In Jewish time, we’re approaching Shavuot – all at once festival of first fruits (how’s your garden?), festival of revelation (we ritually receive Torah anew), and festival of commitment (we “marry” the Sacred we call God). I can imagine no better time to ask what it’s all good for.
Torah’s core answer comes in the middle of this week’s portion (Lev. 26:11-13):
| וְנָתַתִּ֥י מִשְׁכָּנִ֖י בְּתוֹכְכֶ֑ם וְלֹֽא־תִגְעַ֥ל נַפְשִׁ֖י אֶתְכֶֽם׃ וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי֙ בְּת֣וֹכְכֶ֔ם וְהָיִ֥יתִי לָכֶ֖ם לֵֽאלֹהִ֑ים וְאַתֶּ֖ם תִּהְיוּ־לִ֥י לְעָֽם׃ אֲנִ֞י יהוָ֣”ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֗ם אֲשֶׁ֨ר הוֹצֵ֤אתִי אֶתְכֶם֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם מִֽהְיֹ֥ת לָהֶ֖ם עֲבָדִ֑ים וָאֶשְׁבֹּר֙ מֹטֹ֣ת עֻלְּכֶ֔ם וָאוֹלֵ֥ךְ אֶתְכֶ֖ם קֽוֹמְמִיּֽוּת׃ | I will place My dwelling amidst you, and I will not cast you away. I will be ever present amidst you: I will be your God, and you will be My people. I YHVH am your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright. |
Living upright, we learn, means living into inward wholeness come what may (Nahmanides, Lev. 26:12) – without feeling existentially diminished or afraid (Rashi, Lev. 26:12), in communion with the past and endlessly striving to better the future (Sforno, Lev. 26:12).
It’s a beautiful depiction – and, truth time: How many of us were raised with that, whatever our birth-family religion? (No? Me neither.) Most kids aren’t yet inwardly mature enough to really get it, most adults never learned it, and so spirituality faces a generational catch-22. (A related 20th century reason is the Holocaust: in profound ways, Judaism itself got burned, so it’s little surprise that few of our influencers could imagine wholeness or divine communion.)
For many reasons, Western religion most often seems to frame its “point” in base terms: love and fear, commands and consequences. Torah, Prophets, Christian Testament and Qur’an all teach that obedience brings blessing while disobedience brings suffering.
This week’s Torah portion is chock full of it. Torah envisions that if we honor mitzvot, then rains will fall in right times, food will be plentiful, life will be secure, wild beasts won’t menace, there’ll be no war and enemies will flee (Lev. 26:3-10). But if we don’t honor mitzvot, we’ll face illness, soil won’t yield and enemies will triumph (Lev. 26:14-17). If these consequences don’t turn us, then we’ll face wild beasts, pestilence and hunger (Lev. 26:18-26). If we still don’t turn, then exile and destruction will follow (Lev. 26:27-33). Only then will the land renew and, after hitting rock-bottom, folks will turn back and find the covenant renewed (Lev. 26:34-45).
Even I feel turned off by these words. I cringe to associate the Sacred with magically negative consequences, or words that sound punitive, or forecasts that seem brutishly unjust. (After all, some shining souls suffer, while some folks who do heinous things seem to thrive.) Pirkei Avot (core text of Jewish ethics, which we’re learning in community) rejects consequentialism entirely: To our post-exile ancestors, we should aspire to live upright for its own sake – not for goodies or to avoid punishment.
So what gives with Torah? I can only share my personal understandings.
One abides in Torah’s structure. Torah’s “core answer” words about life upright
(Lev. 26:11-13) come immediately after the promises of positive consequences
(Lev. 26:3-10) and before the promises of negative consequences bringing us back (Lev. 26:14-45). It’s as if Torah is secretly whispering that the point of spiritual life, life upright, hides in plain sight at the junction of positive and negative – ultimately transcending both.
Another abides in psychology. Kids begin learning conscience by reward and punishment. I imagine our spiritual ancestors, newly freed from centuries of bondage, as spiritual infants unable to learn any other way. And I imagine all of us, in times of heightened emotion, reverting to younger forms of ourselves, projecting onto God and tradition however we are. In that spirit, it makes sense that in times of strife we’d feel as if God turned away from us, or is punishing us, or doesn’t exist at all.
And thus my third understanding: wise spirituality. Torah is wise to include these words – confounding as they sometimes may be – because they so accurately depict the universal human wrestle with ultimate concerns. We all have times of feeling blessed, like we’re living upright – then feeling cursed, broken, rebellious and devastated. Whoever we are, whatever we believe or nothing at all, we’re all on that utterly human journey. And amidst it all, the holy call of upright living never gives up on us.
Covenant doesn’t promise only rainbows and puppies, but does promise holy relationship beyond circumstance and time itself. The point is life upright, freed from the inner bondage of existential diminishment and dread, in deep relationship with the if/thens of wise and sacred living, for the sake of an even deeper relationship within that endures come what may.
This covenant is renewed. Our collective recommitment on Shavuot is fast approaching. The Book of Leviticus closes; a new book begins. Hazak hazak v’nithazeik! May we be strong and strengthen each other for life upright.
David Evan Markus 