Some weeks, in our exploration of the weekly Torah portion, we react to the events of the world immediately around us. Other weeks the Torah portion raises themes that apply to our lives or our Judaism on a more subtle, ongoing basis.
This past Shabbat we read the final parashah (portion) from the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus), a tract concerned with the Israelites’, and subsequently our, pursuit of holiness—a way of life in which we cultivate a concern for the sacred; in which we tap into an ongoing consciousness of the fundamental holiness inherent in life. A central way of doing this, according to Jewish tradition, is through the mitzvot, what are traditionally defined as commandments, the myriad pathways—rituals, ethical practices, and more—of revealing the Divine in this world.
The final verse in the Book of Vayikra, after recounting so many of these different mitzvot is simply, “These are the commandments that Adonai gave Moses for the Israelite people on Mount Sinai” (Leviticus 27:34).
What may seem like simply a summative encapsulation of the Book of Vayikra meant something very different to the ancient rabbis of the Talmud. “This verse means,” the rabbis suggested, “that a prophet is not permitted to introduce any new element related to the Torah and its mitzvot from here on” (Shabbat 104a). The fact that the verse in Torah says “these are the mitzvot” (emphasis added) means, according to the ancient rabbis, these are the mitzvot and this is Torah, and not other material.
What Judaism has to offer is a container, a set of practices through which to explore the world and how we make sense of it—the universe and the Divine. In a teaching I like to share from Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, she writes, “Religion is the container of the life of the spirit. It is the gravity that anchors spirit to earth, translating the vision of the soul into the responsibility of the individual. In the best of all possible worlds, spirituality and religion are partners. The soul’s most profound experiences with a presence greater than the self are given form and articulation through liturgy, ritual and moral law.” In other words, having religion, having Judaism, having a fixed set of rituals and practices provides the opportunity for us to hone our relationship to the Divine, to holiness, and to one another.
On the other hand, in an ideal world, “these Commandments” are susceptible to worlds of meaning that allow us to deepen our relationship to what’s behind them. As Rabbi Art Green writes, “The Hasidic masters [founders of a Jewish mystical revivalist movement] insist that the Torah must have new interpretations in each generation, in accord with the generation’s spiritual character. Only in this way, they clearly state, does Torah, eternally belonging to God, historically belonging to Moses, become our Torah… As a community still committed to a sacred canon, we privilege those texts to bear, and to transport us to, infinite other realms of meaning, the ‘inner palaces’ of Torah. We thus make the same claim for Torah that we make for the natural world itself: remove the veil of surface impressions, go deeper, and you will find there something profound and holy.”
So while a fixed set of ritual practices allows our exploration to have an anchor and a container, it also need not feel like a limiting experience. Exploring these practices can have limitless possibilities. As Rabbi Sasso continues, “Religious forms, in turn, remain constantly open to the renewal of sacred moments. If spirituality at its best lifts us up, religion at its best keeps us rooted. Religion can test spiritual vision in the crucible of community and history. Spirituality can keep religion from forgetting the experience that formed the story. Religion keeps spirituality from selfishness; it reminds us of our obligations. Spirituality keeps religion from absolutism; it reminds us that the breath of God blows through each and every human soul.”
We both recognize the opportunity presented to us by devoting ourselves to a time-honored, and in a sense, eternal, spiritual tradition, and recognize that we don’t leave that tradition as we found it; we bring our own life, our own spirit to it, the blend of the two—tradition and the individual spirit—weaving together to form what we call Torah, the Etz Hayim, the Tree of Life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi K.