You Can't See Me

BaMidbar, BaMidbar

One of the strangest moments I ever experienced was when a rabbi standing in front of a Torah class turned to us, a group of some thirty women, and said, “You can’t see me.”

I was taken aback. In front of me stood a tie, a suit, a gesturing hand, even bold blue eyes, but the being who was animating all those physical things was not visible to my eyes. Even if the person standing in front of me donned different clothing – a different tie, skis instead of a suit, a different hand, even a different face – he would still be him.

Today you can have heart replacement surgery. They take out your heart and give you a new one. They can even replace parts of the brain.

If they took away everything you have – your money, your house, your clothing, even your body – would you still be you? This is question that the mitzvah of tznius forces us to confront.

I once read a quote that said, “The most valuable things in the world are not things.” Like you. You aren’t just pair of hands and a bladder. You have inner content. You are a thinking person and an emotive person. You have meaningful relationships with ideas, with other people, with G-d, and with yourself. You can have self-respect because you often make good choices and learn from your mistakes.

Being tznius means that you are aware of all this and allow it to fill you up. When your feeling of worth comes from genuine self-knowledge and self-respect, you don’t need to grab attention by dressing provocatively, behaving provocatively, or flashing money.

Tznius is usually translated as modesty, but it does not mean modesty in the typical sense. Tznius means internality. The tzanuah person draws attention to her inner content by de-emphasizing those factors that might distract people from who she really is. Ever heard the expression, “My eyes are up here?” Instead of drawing attention to your body, tznius draws attention to the fact that you are more than a body.

Flashy externals can distract others from who you really are. However, once another person gets to know you for who you really are, then your beautiful externals can become meaningful expressions of the relationship instead of distractions.  

An example of this takes place in Parashas BaMidbar. “When the camp is to journey, Aharon (Aaron) and his sons shall come and take down the partition-curtain and cover the ark of testimony with it.” (Bamidbar-Numbers 4:5) The vessels of the Mishkan (Tabernacle)  were gorgeous. Gold and silver, silks and leathers, incredible hand-made dyes, amazing carvings and exquisite weaves. But these beautiful things were not flashed and displayed for all the world to see.

The beauty of the Mishkan wasn’t used to gain the admiration of other nations. In fact, it was hidden from other nations.

When the Jewish People set up camp and settled down, the Mishkan was set up with them. Only then was the beauty of the Mishkan displayed. The purpose of the beauty of the Mishkan was to express the relationship that the Jewish People had with G-d, but the relationship itself didn’t depend on physical, external pleasures or beauties. He wasn’t our “trophy husband”.

We had committed to Him unconditionally, regardless of whether He showered us with a Mishkan of silver and gold. We didn’t marry Him for His money. We knew Him for who He is, the essence that the eyes can’t see.

Tznius is the foundation for that kind of relationship, and that’s the kind of deep, loving relationship that every human being deserves.

Written originally for www.ArachimUSA.org

Thanks to Claudio for the fantastic picture!

The Freedom Conundrum

Parashas VaYikra, Chumash VaYikra

On July 13^th, 1977, New York City plunged into darkness. Downed traffic lights sent thousands of cars and buses careening into accidents. Subways ground to a dead halt inside pitch-black tunnels. Telephone lines were silenced. The millions of glittering lights and bright windows of America’s metropolis were exchanged for candles and shadow.

In 1965, just a little over ten years earlier, a different power outage had taken place. The event was still affectionately referred to by the phrase “Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?” Many of the citizens who had experienced the neighborly atmosphere of 1965 took to the streets in 1977 with a smile. But this time things were different. The New York of 1965 was long gone.

The difference wasn’t in the power outage. Once again, as in the sixties, it would take over twenty-four hours until the city regained electricity. The difference was in the people. Goodbye, neighborly smiles.

“Night of Terror”

This time howls of violence filled the air. Vandalism ran rampant. Witnesses reported kids driving stolen cars up to grated storefronts, roping the grates to the backs of the cars and looting the wrecked property even in broad daylight. Thieves paraded the streets flashing stolen electronics, furniture, and other wares from some 1,500 gutted properties.

Arson also hit hard. At one point two whole Broadway blocks were simultaneously on fire. All told, over 1,000 fires were responded to that night. These fires didn’t start by accident. None of it was by accident.

And then, on August 15^th, 2003, it happened again. This time it was even worse. Fifty million men, women and children throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan, and even neighboring Ottawa and Toronto were suddenly left powerless. Half a million people climbed out of abruptly blackened subway tunnels. Land lines, cell phones, and computers went dumb. Elevators stopped dead. Gas stations didn’t work and airports couldn’t function. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got on the radio to warn citizens to stay calm, cooperate, and drink plenty of water in the August heat. Really? Thanks, Michael.

As electricity flowed back into people’s lives, the typical American questions began yammering away on all the reignited media sources: where did the power outage catch you? Elevator or office? How did you feel? Did you think it was a terrorist attack? Did you panic? Did you ever think this could happen in the United States of America? And, of course, the stereotypical Israeli-type questions hit the airways running as well: has an investigative committee been established yet?

All these questions took the floor loud and strong, filling ears and minds with all the typical answers: “Well, Jim, I’ll tell you the truth. I was sitting in a bathroom stall and…”

But the real questions? The real questions never even got a chance.

The Gift of Time

And so man created a monster. Our dependence on electricity and technology bit us in the heel. Two days went by and the crisis was over. The beat went on. But what would have happened to civilization across the Northeast and Midwestern United States if the electrical outage had lasted for a week? Or for a month?

In his book The Sane Society, Professor Erich Fromm takes a unique angle on New York’s 1977 and 2003 collapse: “There is no belief more prevalent than the idea that we, the citizens of the twentieth century, are absolutely sane. But are we so sure that we do not delude ourselves in this? Many mental hospital patients are convinced that it’s all the rest that are crazy.

“Imagine what would happen to our advanced western culture were just four weeks to go by without the functioning of any theatres, radios, televisions, sports events or newspapers. There is no doubt that within even this short time thousands of individuals would suffer nervous breakdowns…the moment these ‘sedatives’ were taken away.”

In retrospect, it seems that the development of advanced technologies should have given man the most precious gift possible, the gift of time. Thanks to technology, a larger sum of activities can be accomplished in a single 2012 lifetime than could be accomplished just a few generations ago in over three hundred years.

Also thanks in part to technology, modern medicine has lengthened life itself, adding many years to the average lifespan and significantly improving the quality of these years. For example, the lifespan of the average Frenchman 150 years ago totaled age 45, whereas the lifespan of the average Israeli man today is 78 years. Such facts bring sober men pause.

Once again, though, the superficial dialogue can drown out the real questions. What does modern man do with this incalculable gift? What do we do with our time? The twenty-first century has given us so much extra time, unexpected time, free time. It’s time that we could never, ever have enough money to pay for. After all, how much would you pay for even one extra year of life? Or for that year to be spent on your feet rather than strapped to a gurney? It’s a different world.

However, the disturbing truth is that it’s a world we run away from.

Rat Race, Mouse Trap

The entertainment industry is one of the most highly developed, active, and important industries in the Western World. Billions of dollars flow through this industry every year, changing hands and burning fast, all focused on a single objective: passing the time. Killing free time. And if possible? Killing it just for fun.

In our century alone, the Western World has seen tens of millions of military personnel and ordinary citizens sacrifice their lives in the name of freedom. Bloody battles against evil dictatorships that would steal away individual liberties have been won time and again; the common man has been set free from the shackles that bound him.

Yet all this has led our common man to a strange end. Freed from blatant governmental oppression, he find himself enslaved once again, but this time even more insidiously. This new enslavement is not only against his will, but without his knowledge. His time is sapped and his mind is manipulated, cashed in on by the very culture he had turned to for liberation. According to a 2010 survey by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American spends about three hours watching TV every single day, to say nothing of Facebook, movies, and all the rest of it.

Dreams get buried under the Pringle crumbs littering the couch. Our newly liberated man becomes another voiceless drone of western culture, his time just another faceless dog on a chain.

Freedom? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness? Time use statistics speak louder than words. The events of 1977 and 2003 speak louder than words. Most of us are not free, most of us are terribly dependent. It seems that for the common man, western culture has failed.

This isn’t easy to face. Most of us think of America as the liberator, not the oppressor. But America and Western culture’s failure is not incidental. The root of the failure of Western culture lies at the heart of its value system, in how it relates to the concept of freedom.

Facing Sunday

Western culture places freedom at the top of the priority list. Freedom is valued as an end in and of itself. Yet this is exactly where the Western world shoots itself in the foot. Freedom is not an end. Freedom is a means. Ironically, when the pursuit of freedom is positioned as an end rather than a means, liberty devolves into a perverse form of self-enslavement. And the worst thing about enslavement to oneself is that there is nowhere to run.

Freedom, freedom, ringing in our ears; it begins to sound like a gong, like terror. What does our common man do when he has finally won the magical gift, all wrapped up with a bow and wrapped in silk and linen? He eagerly opens up the box to find that it is empty, and no amount of “entertainment” or “killing time” can make that emptiness go away. What then? The taskmaster, his existential hunger, is never satisfied because sitcoms are not satisfying. His time, his very life, is eaten up staring at inert glowing screens. And what else is there?

It’s no accident that Sunday, America’s day off, is the most common day for suicides in that country.

Yet the original historical president for the pursuit of freedom as a human right and duty was the Jewish exodus from Egypt. In contrast to the typical Western conception of freedom, the Hebrew word for freedom is cherus, very similar to the Hebrew word charus. Charus means engraved. As the saying goes, some things are written in stone.

The Jews did not leave Egypt for an empty freedom, the self-enslavement of the west, but to be engraved with a deeper truth, a fulfilling purpose. Rather than serving Pharaoh, or serving their own flippant lusts and instincts, the Jewish People committed to serving the Almighty. Freedom was not their final objective, but their means to an end. The real goal was to partner with the Almighty in the actualization of His glorious Torah, His exquisite master plan for humanity and all of creation. It wasn’t at all about leaving Egypt in order to free up more time to go to the movies. Six hundred and thirteen mitzvos (commandments) were about to become the Jews’ six hundred and thirteen opportunities for genuine and lasting fulfillment.

This wasn’t some big secret. Everyone knew right from the start, “When you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve G-d on this mountain.” (Shemos-Exodus 3:12) The Almighty spoke these words to Moshe (Moses) at the burning bush, the very first executive brainstorming session for the entire project. The Jews knew exactly what the deal was, and they wanted in.

What did they know about freedom that we have forgotten?

Corridor to the Palace

Bob Dylan put it this way: “You gotta serve somebody.” It’s not just a hippy lyric, it’s an existential truth. The question is only whom you are going to serve. Facing that fact is one of the milestones of human maturity. Choosing meaningful priorities is what defines us as human as opposed to animal, as fulfilled or existentially empty. Choosing wisely can be the difference between life and death on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Parashas VaYikra sees the Almighty instructing Moshe about how to bring an animal offering: “When a man among you brings an offering to Hashem – from the cattle or from the flock shall you bring your offering.” (VaYikra-Leviticus 1:2)

Animal offerings, known as korbanos, were the Jewish response to human error. When the immediate repercussions of poor moral decisions meant the slaughtering of expensive livestock, accountability for one’s actions became abundantly clear.

Furthermore, korbanos made the difference between human and animal visceral. When a person behaves like an animal, the consequences of his behavior are destructive to himself, to other people and to society as a whole. Good examples of this are theft, vandalism, rape and all of the other heinous acts that were shamelessly flaunted in 1977 and 2003.

Killing an animal for an offering was not an act of violence, it was an act of anti-violence. When the sinner internalized the severity of what he did, the likelihood was that he would not do it again. The hot blood of the beast pouring beneath his hands brought home what behaving like an animal really meant. It took the ethical dilemma out of the realm of the theoretical and very much down to earth.

Korbanos reminded the Jewish People of the immutable fact that the body, the animalistic part of each of us, is subject to the law of the jungle: kill or be killed. Excuse the pun, but it’s no way to live. Letting go of the animal, the symbolic animal of the offering and the identification with the animal within themselves, was the Jews’ prerequisite to reclaim their identification with the higher truth of their identities, their truly human self, their capacity for free choice and meaningful, godly decisions in their relationships with other people.

Most importantly, though, korbanos brought the rat race to an abrupt halt. Everything finite has an end; everything physical eventually dies. Beyond financial consequences, beyond visceral reminders about our choices vis-à-vis other people, korbanos spoke to the core of individual identity.

The most powerful message of the korban was that if the only thing that matters to you is your body and it’s lusts, get ready to end up just like the beast under your hands. Because one thing about this world is certain – none of us get out of here alive. Unless your identity is focused on things that have no end – spiritual qualities like love, integrity, wisdom, and other forms of greatness – then, as the Talmud Brachos says, “all to death are standing.”

Facing the inevitable finitude of human life can lead to a number of responses. Most North Americans scramble to fill their finite lives with as much “fun” as possible. In contrast, the Jew tries to fill her finite life with that which is infinite. The Jew opens the exquisite gift box of freedom to discover a priceless jewel, a secret that nobody can ever take away from her: this entire world is nothing but a corridor leading to our true destination. We have been given an opportunity to prepare in the corridor before entering the palace.

The true question that all the babble obscures, the ultimate question, the question at the pulsating heart of each of our lives is: who will we be when we get there?

Eyes of a Child

During an Arachim seminar some time ago, one particularly feisty middle-aged man struck up a debate with of one of the lecturers, author Aharon Levi. Sitting in the dining room between presentations, a fast paced back-and-forth covered topics from the legitimacy of Torah’s views on various hot-button issues to the authenticity and historicity of the Torah at all. How do we know it’s true? How can you believe that? Can you prove it? Many good questions volleyed with many thorough responses as the discussion weathered on.

“Look,” the man finally said, “I see everything you’re saying, it all makes sense, but…”

His gaze suddenly shifted to a group of elderly men that had seated themselves in the lobby of the hotel that was visible from the dining room. “What’s that?,” he asked abruptly.

“They’re studying Talmud,” the lecturer answered.

“No, no, you don’t understand,” insisted the man. “What is that? The spark in their eyes, the fire, don’t you see it? They have such vitality in their eyes.”

Not understanding the question, the lecturer asked the older man what he was talking about.

“I am a doctor at a very exclusive old age home,” the man explained. “I know what people’s eyes look like at eighty. They’re dim, shadowed, closing. But look at their eyes,” he continued, pointing. “They have the eyes of children. How can it be?”

“It’s the Talmud,” responded the lecturer simply.

The man looked up with a serious expression on his face. As a few moment went by, still gazing at the group of elderly scholars nearby, the lecturer noticed that tears had sprung to the man’s eyelids. “Okay. Now I see what you’re talking about. I don’t need any more proofs for Torah.”

It’s probably safe to say that the American power outages wouldn’t have bothered that group of elderly Talmud scholars. Why? Because if the power outage caught them in the middle of a study session, they would have just kept on studying by candlelight.

In that light, it’s a shame the power outage couldn’t have lasted longer, but it’s a good thing it only lasted as long as it did. Otherwise Professor Fromm may have been proven even more correct. 1977 and 2003 showed all too plainly that the moment the distractions of the world grind to a halt, most people simply fall apart.

This couldn’t be more different than the Jewish response to material life. Take the need to earn a living. If the whole shebang up and disappeared, the Torah-integrated Jew would not be confused or disoriented. In fact, he would be delighted. Time is not there to be killed. As Maimonides, also known as the Rambam, wrote in the twelfth century:

“The sages and the prophets did not long for the days of the mashiach (messiah) in order to have power over the whole world, nor in order to dominate the idol worshippers, nor in order to be praised by the other nations, nor in order to eat, drink, and be merry, but to have the availability for Torah and its wisdom without barriers and distractions.”

The Torah-integrated Jew neither depends on nor revels in the Western rat race, technology, the entertainment industry, and all the rest. If anything, he is apprehensive of it. Could the flashing lights and bleeping signals make him forget his mission and the purpose of his life? They do for so many others.  The western man glorifies himself in the boom and zoom of distraction, both in his work and in his leisure, since both allow him to temporarily forget the real emptiness at the core of his value system, his identity, and his life.

The Jew aspires to more. What is real freedom about? “The servants of time are the slaves of slaves; the servant of the Almighty alone is free.”

Written for http://www.arachimusa.org/ by Aharon Levi with Braha Bender

Thank you to Ian Britton for use of his glowing photo.

Creative Mastery

Parashas VaYakhel, Chumash Shemos

The concept of a first cause is common sense, but just in case you’re in the fossil record camp, let’s take a look at some of the scientifically compelling evidence for an original, intentional, creative intelligence.

In 2012, the crux of the debate seems to center around the issue of consciousness. Sure, a whole bunch of inert matter banged itself into existence, we can all agree on that, but that isn’t even the biggest monkey wrench in the atheist’s anxiety closet.

Don’t get me wrong – the statistical probability of our universe achieving the conditions to support sentient life in the first place is so slim that there has not been enough time in the scientifically known span of existence to allow for all the correct random details to fall into place by themselves. Billions and billions of years? Nope, not enough. Small technical problem.

But even if you leave aside the fact that the entirety of the known universe appears to have been, in the words of the scientific community, fine-tuned for life – and it’s a lot to leave aside, but whatever, suit yourself – nonetheless, the rise of consciousness itself is even more of a conundrum. It’s the atheists’ Rubik’s Cube. It’s their Immovable Rock. (Ehem, cough-cough, Richard Dawkins, APOLOGETICS, cough.)

The truth is, “He didn’t fall, Jim. He was pushed.” How did inert matter organize itself into sentience? As of 2012, there is no known answer to that question. Except the ones that begin to sound suspiciously theological.

“It’s Alive!”

For all its mystery, consciousness remains the most unique, beautiful – dare I say, creative – creation of them all. Sure, all the scientists in the world can’t jazz their brains up enough to find a way to pop even a lump of rock out of nothing at all, but far more impressive than a lump of rock was, say, Mozart or Tolkien or Rabbi Cohen. (Which Rabbi Cohen? Take your pick. They’re all more impressive than a lump of rock, I assure you, by virtue of the simple fact that they are human.)

G-d asserts creative mastery over His universe by bringing it into existence moment by ineffable moment, a fact that even the physical sciences have impressed upon us of late due to the persistent and growing voice of quantum physics, despite all Newtonian evidence to the contrary. Particles of a scale beyond ken arise out of nothingness at a rate more similar to ideas than to physical matter, these being the fundamental building blocks of our everything – milkshakes and nerve endings and comets and walrus tusks!

And still, as awe-inspiring as it is, as inconceivably amazing as it is, all this assertion of G-d’s mastery pales in the face of His ongoing creation of human intelligence. Look: G-d gave lumps of rock (okay, not rock precisely, more like protons, neutrons and electrons) the ability to up and assert their own creative mastery. What could be more mind blowing than that? The ability to reflect and assert creative mastery over one’s reality, in a word, human consciousness – this is a gift. Not even the most dedicated and brilliant of scientists can explain it without asserting a purposeful, masterful intelligence.

Purposeful, masterful intelligence? We call that G-d. What best proves G-d in 2012? That G-d created creativity.

And once a week He asks us to keep Him in mind.

Creative Bloodstream

The thirty-nine general categories of forbidden behaviors on Shabbos are based on the thirty-nine general categories of creative work it took to construct the Mishkan. The various labors that comprise farming and landscaping, the culinary arts, textile development, the visual and literary arts, urban development, business: in Jewish consciousness, these and the other thirty-nine melachos are thought to be the basis of how humans assert our creative mastery over our world. The Almighty gives us the ability to imitate Him on something like His own terms.

We revel and thrive in this unique capacity but it can also lead us to be a little too big for our britches. When we forget that our strength stems from an Infinite Source of strength, our wisdom from an Infinite Source of wisdom, our creativity from an Infinite Source of creativity, we cripple ourselves. We block our access to our own Source. Why is Shabbos is called mekor habracha, the source of blessing? It’s not just a flowery metaphor. Refraining from creative mastery once a week does not limit us, it reconnects us with the Source of creativity.

In making time to connect with the Almighty, we replenish our capacity to do everything that matters. We revive our capacity to be human instead of machine. We tap the bloodstream of our creativity and all our other strengths. Shabbos is a twenty-six hour island in time that allows us to let go of anything holding us back.

After all, tap into G-d and you’ve tapped into everything. Plug into His Torah and you’re back in the captain’s chair – the controls are all laid out before you, all the secrets of the universe at your command.

The Presence

Shabbos is often thought of as a day of rest due to a mistranslation of the word menucha. On the seventh day, G-d had menucha. Does that mean that the Almighty grabbed an easy chair and whipped up a Pina Colada? Give me a break. An accurate translation of menucha is less akin to couch-potato and more akin to letting go.

On Shabbos we let go. We let go of our worries and troubles. We let go of our illusory and grasping sense of control. We let go of fear. (Nobody will die if you stop checking your e-mail for one day.) We let go of our busywork and let in our family. We let go of what we do and let in who we are. We let go and let G-d.

What comes in when you let go? A Presence. Call the Presence the Shabbos Queen. Call the Presence the Shechina. Call the Presence the Source, the Force. Call the Presence the First Cause, a Creative Intelligence, Oraysa. Call the Presence what you will, He is there. He is not an “it” (or a “he” in the sense of gender, but that is a different story). The point is that He is so alive that He is the very source of life.

And what happens when consciousness taps into its Source? What sparks fly? What creativity is apt to occur? What amazing possibilities are brought to into being? That’s between you and Him, an intimacy called Shabbos that is at the center of all time and space. Big bang? Boom.

Originally written for http://www.arachimusa.org/.

Much thanks to Brentbat for use of his rather glorious photo.

How to Become a Prophet

Parashas Tetzaveh, Chumash Shemos

Parashas Tetzaveh introduces the Urim and Tumim. To even begin to describe what these words refer to, we almost have to excuse ourselves from the English language. Watch this:

The Urim and Tumim were the oracle associated with the choshen mishpat (breastplate of judgment) of the kohen gadol (High Priest).

The Urim and Tumim could only be consulted by a king, the Sanhedrin, or a public official in the interest of the entire community. This oracle was in use until the destruction of the First Temple (421 BCE).

When the Urim and Tumim would be consulted, the High Priest would have to wear all eight vestments. Both he and the questioner would face the ark. The questioner would then make his inquiry in such a low voice, that no one else but he would hear it.

The High Priest would then meditate on the stones of the breastplate until he reached a level of Divine Inspiration. He would then see the breastplate with inspired vision. The letters containing the answer would appear to stand out. With his Divine Inspiration, the High Priest would then be able to combine the letters to spell out the answer.

Only one question at a time could be asked of the Urim and Tumim. If more than one question were asked, only the first would be answered.

The Urim and Tumim were necessary even while there were prophets. While a prophet cannot receive a message at will, the Urim and Tumim could be used at any time. Moreover, while an evil decree foretold by a prophet could be changed, the message of the Urim and Tumim was irrevocable.

(Excerpted from The Handbook of Jewish Thought by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Maznaim Publishing)

The Urim and Tumim were only one of the ten miracles that would take place regularly during the various activities and services of the beis hamikdash. Prophets and prophetesses abounded. And although all of the above may be very interesting, it sure doesn’t sound like real life. Oracle? Meditate? Divine Inspiration? Help!

In English these things sound incomprehensible, but the Torah wasn’t written in English, phonetically or culturally.  Comprehending the Torah’s supernatural phenomena doesn’t require a suspension of reason or a leap of faith. It just requires a bit of definition.

Up Close and Personal

Like a lot of other words in the English language, the word “prophet” is rather murkily defined. Isn’t a prophet some deranged fellow with a bird’s nest of hair, ranting and raving about upcoming dooms day?

No, that’s Jerusalem Syndrome, a clinically documented form of psychosis making a small percentage of visitors to Jerusalem abruptly begin to tie white bed sheets into togas, shout biblical verses in public, and earnestly believe that they are the messiah. Not kidding. Just visit the Old City and you’ll see. Or the Knesset.

But prophecy in Torah Judaism doesn’t look anything like Jerusalem Syndrome.

Judaism is really a very pragmatic religion. As far as religions go, we don’t really buy into spirituality in any typical way. Ever seen religious Jews studying Talmud? We aren’t interested in being indoctrinated. When the Torah says “prophecy”, it doesn’t mean “superstitious feel-good mystical experience.” When it says “Urim and Tumim”, it doesn’t mean “ancient ritual good-luck charm”.

To appreciate the Torah definition of prophecy, you have to appreciate the Torah perception of reality. We are not, as in some other paradigms, living in a physical universe run by some impersonal heavenly bureaucracy. And let me make this perfectly upfront: we are not living The Secret either. I’m not G-d and neither are you.

Rather, Torah explains that the Almighty is the infinite source of all reality. One of the names Jews assign to the Infinite is HaMakom which literally means The Place. To paraphrase that title, the Almighty is the Context that you and I live within. Another name, HaRachaman, The Compassionate One, is related to the word rechem, womb. He holds us within Him.

Just as a mother is greater than her fetus can know, so the Almighty is infinitely greater than we can comprehend. Yet, nonetheless, we live finite lives in the context of an infinite Creator. It isn’t such an easy idea to wrap your head around.

The thing is, what with all our being limited, physically-bound human beings as opposed to His incomprehensible infinitude, there is one aspect of our being that is a direct expression of His essence. That aspect of every human being, called a nefesh or neshama, is actually as infinite as He is. The word neshama is etymologically related to the word neshima, breath. As the Torah describes, the Infinite figuratively blew from the innermost of His being a breath of life into an inert clod of earth and called the new creature Adam.

Of course, that was where things began to get interesting.

Breaking the Rules

If you find yourself feeling a little confused at this stage, that’s a good sign. It means you’re following. The concepts of G-d’s transcendence and G-d’s immanence really are paradoxical to the human mind. It feels like they can’t live in the same logical universe until you start realizing that G-d doesn’t play by anybody’s rules.

I mean, ask the Jews. We haven’t played by anybody’s rules for millennia. We’re called a stiff-necked people. We’re known for our chutzpa. Throughout the course of history, we have known that rules are meant to be broken. Limits are meant to be transcended. And by keeping the right rules, you end up breaking much better ones. Like the so-called laws of nature.

You see, there’s a slim volume on most Torah observant Jews’ bookshelves called the Mesilas Yesharim. It looks like nothing more than a Jewish ethical treatise about how to become a really, really nice guy, but those who have read it know that the final chapter describes how to receive prophecy and revive the dead. This is no accident. It isn’t like Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto decided to add a little mystical addendum at the end of his Jewish ethics guide as a pick-me-up bonus section.

Rather, the Jewish perception of reality is that when you work on ethics, becoming a really, really nice guy, you begin to transcend human nature. You begin to make miracles within yourself. (Ever tried to hold back when you were genuinely furious at someone? Animals can’t do that.) When you learn how to transcend your own nature, the Almighty opens up the door for you to transcend all of nature.

Prophecy takes place when a Jewish man or woman has refined himself or herself to such an extent that G-d’s presence within and around him or her becomes completely revealed. As the Mesilas Yesharim explains, “It begins with effort and ends with a gift”. When a person has undertaken the greatest extent of effort that he or she can undertake to fulfill G-d’s will and come close to Him, He makes His presence overwhelmingly clear. Sometimes that clarity transcended time and prophets would have a glimpse of the future. Other times, prophets would have crystal clarity about the present, helping people to find lost objects, make important decisions, or resolve relationship issues.

At the height of the period of prophecy, the same period when the first beis hamikdash was standing, Jewish history recounts literally thousands of prophets and prophetesses throughout the land of Israel. It wasn’t uncommon. It was exquisite. As generations sunk to lower spiritual levels, prophecy became more and more difficult to obtain until it slipped away from the world entirely. Malachi, the last prophet, lived during the early days of the second beis hamikdash, around 313 BCE.

The Urim and Tumim introduced in Parashas Tetzaveh were just one part of a bigger picture. Let’s put it this way: supernatural phenomena happen in Context. Put all the pieces together and you end up with a picture that looks a lot like Aharon HaKohen, the first High Priest.

Aharon’s Personal Freedom

Aharon (Aaron) was divinely appointed as the first kohen gadol  in the Jewish People because his character was the ideal template for all future priests to serve in the beis hamikdash.

The Torah commanded that, “Aharon shall bear the names of the sons of Israel on the choshen mishpat on his heart…” (Shmos-Exodus 28:29) As mentioned earlier, the choshen mishpat was the breastplate bearing the mystical Urim and Tumim. One of the meanings of this commandment was that to serve as a true kohen gadol, Aharon needed to carry Israel in his heart with genuine caring, a caring uninterrupted by jealousy, selfishness, materialism, or any of the other garden-variety limitations we find ourselves bound by.

We have so many role models of personal freedom in the Torah because freedom comes in so many flavors. Aharon was free of anything that kept him from caring about other people. He had removed the barriers keeping him from fully tapping into his neshama. He epitomized the mandate to “love peace and pursue peace”. No limits. The “rules” had all been broken.

Aharon transcended his own human nature. When he made himself supernatural, the Almighty opened the door to the supernatural for him. It wasn’t such a stretch for the miracles of the beis hamikdash to play out for Aharon because Aharon was already living miraculously. The Urim and Tumim were as authentic an expression of G-d’s will as Aharon was…and as we can become.

So, ever wanted to become a prophet? Connect with G-d? Experience miracles? There may seem to be a very wide spectrum between changing your nature to watching nature change, but it’s the same essential mechanism. If you really want to comprehend the supernatural events the Torah describes, you’ll just have to experience them for yourself. Our ancestors have been doing it for about four thousand years.

Originally published by http://www.arachimusa.org/

Thanks so much to badjonni for use of his rad picture, lassoing the stars.