Hatikvah: A Shabbat Service in Solidarity with Israel, October 13, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman
When Caron and I were in Israel last February, we went with a couple dozen of my colleagues to a small cluster of communities near the Gaza border called Sha’ar Hanegev. Our hosts there welcomed us at the local community center, showed us into a meeting room, and, over tea and cakes, we had the chance to meet with this man:
Ofir Libstein
Ofir Libstein, the mayor of Sha’ar Hanegev. Mr. Libstein shared with us something of what life was like for him and his neighbors living in that troubled corner of the world. He spoke about the Palestinians on the other side of the border and acknowledged that, while some people in Gaza certainly wished him harm, he was confident that most of the Palestinians there were just like him – people with husbands, wives, children, and friends, just trying to live their lives as peaceably as they could.
Last Saturday, Hamas terrorists murdered Ofir Libstein in a firefight at Sha’ar Hanegev.
Hayim Katsman
This is a picture of Hayim Katsman, a peace activist whose 2021 dissertation at the University of Washington in the United States was entitled “Religious-Nationalism in Israel/Palestine.” Hayim’s grandfather was Ben Zion Wacholder, a renowned expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls who was a Talmud professor of mine when I was in rabbinical school. Hayim lived at Kibbutz Cholit. He died shielding a neighbor from the terrorists’ bullets. That neighbor later went on to save two children from the attacks, as well, adding to the circle of life saved by the heroic actions of Hayim Katsman that day.
My daughter, Shoshana, loves going to music festivals. She spent a few weeks in Israel earlier this year, but had she been there last Shabbat, she would almost certainly have been at the Supernova music festival, where Hamas murderers killed 263 people.
This touches us all. So many of us have connections like this to the events of the past week.
Saturday, October 7 was the deadliest day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. These are the pictures of just some of the victims. 
The terrorists murdered more than 1300 people in Israel last Saturday. But that number – 1300 – hides so much. Because it’s not just that 1300 people were killed, it’s that Ofir Libstein was killed. And Hayim Katsman. And people with names like Nurit Berger. And Hannah Ben Arzi. And the list goes on, and on, and on. They were old, and they were young, they were married and they were single. They had families, they had partners, they had friends. Many were non-Jews, who were living or working in the Jewish state.
“He who destroys a single life,” the Talmud says, “is considered to have destroyed a world.” In Saturday’s violence, 1300 lives came to a sudden end at the hands of terrorist evildoers. We mourn their deaths tonight; we pay tribute to their lives. About 150 others were taken hostage, and we pray for their safe return.
We are here tonight to celebrate Shabbat. And we are here to grieve. And we are here to reflect. And we are here because we need one another. And we are here in search of God’s comfort and guidance. When you kill one Jew, you injure the Jewish heart. And we are here to nurse our wounded heart together. It was Israelis who were attacked on Saturday, but, as Yehudah Amichai’s poem we read earlier notes, the diameter of that bomb extends much farther – even to here in Calgary and beyond. How wonderful it is that you are here, because tonight, I need to be with you. Because your community needs to be with you. Tonight, we need each other.
As your rabbi, I think I’m supposed to comfort you at this juncture, but I’m finding that difficult, because right now, I need comforting, too.
Out of the pain and grief of this moment, I would like to share a couple of thoughts.
First, this is a moment that calls for moral clarity on the part of the Jewish people. Israel was attacked by terrorists. Old people and young people were slaughtered, as we’ve noted – men, women, and children. The killers went to their victims’ homes, to their town centers, and to a music festival, and they filmed their multi-pronged pogrom so they could brag about it to the world as it happened and afterward.
There are those who blame Israeli policy for these attacks, arguing that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its treatment of Palestinians somehow paved the way for the horrors of last Saturday. This argument is utter hogwash. Yes, there has been longstanding conflict between Israelis and. But when you and I are having a dispute, however nasty my own behavior might be, you don’t come to my home and kill my family. Such a response is never called for, it’s never “understandable,” it’s never a result of previous mistreatment. Accusations that Israeli policy brought this on are simply attempts to blame the victims, and to excuse unconscionable acts of terror. It is a perspective that we should refute at every possible opportunity.
There are those in the media who refer to the perpetrators of this violence as freedom fighters, and as people struggling for peace, and on behalf the rights of their people. That terminology is wrong, of course – the perpetrators were terrorists. People who are fighting for national liberation don’t attack concert-goers. People who want peace in their land don’t murder peace activists. Those who want a better world for their people don’t commit brutal acts of terror.
Let’s be clear. Like many of us, I’m opposed to the occupation. Like many, I dream of a state for the Palestinian people just as we Jews have. And I, too, am horrified at some of the ways Israel has treated those who live in Gaza and the West Bank. But none of this – none of it – caused this week’s carnage. This week’s carnage was a reprehensible act of hate perpetrated by people committed to violence and evil. Full stop.
“Yes, but the occupation,” some people say. “Yes, but the corruption of the Netanyahu government. Yes, but ….”
For the murder of infants, there is no “yes but.”
For the slaughter of innocents, there is no “yes but.”
For taking the elderly and the wounded hostage in a war zone, “yes but” has no place.
And now, Israel is left with no choice but to fight Hamas: to eliminate the threat that they pose, to guarantee the safety of innocent Israelis, and to bring the hostages home. God willing, Israel will be able to minimize the loss of innocent lives on the other side of the border. Sadly, tragically, with Hamas using Palestinian citizens and Israeli hostages as human shields, such deaths may be unavoidable.
As Israel engages in this important but necessary struggle, we need to support Israel however we can. So, when you hear friends and coworkers blaming Israel for these attacks, you need to call out those views. And when you read editorials and social media posts echoing these ideas, write back with rejoinders. And when you see Israel blamed for the slaughter of its own, stand strong beside her. And donate generously to Israel, because Israel and her citizens need our help.
Second, let’s remember that although these attacks targeted mostly Jewish Israelis, Jews are far from the only victims of Hamas’s terror. Hamas has caused great suffering on the part of Palestinians, too. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, and soon afterward, Hamas took control of the area. It was a moment of such promise when Israel gave Gazans their autonomy. But Hamas squandered foreign aid in a morass of corruption. Hamas thugs quashed their political opponents, often violently. And now, Hamas terrorists have brought upon Gaza’s citizens the full wrath of the Israel Defense Forces. Hamas now has Jewish blood on its hands, and it has Palestinian blood on its hands, too.
Let us hope and pray that, in the heat of war, Israel is able to remember this as it engages in the crucial task of defending itself against terrorism. There are more than two million people living in that little Gaza strip. There is no electricity, and Israel, who maintains external control of the area, has turned off access to food and water. The only way out might have been through Egypt, but Egypt hasn’t opened the door. There are evildoers there, they live among the innocents, and the combination of the evil and the innocent represents a humanitarian disaster in the making.
Can Israel aim its missiles at the bad guys while sparing the good guys? I don’t think so, but hopefully, Israel can minimize the loss of innocent lives. Is there a way for Israel to do what it needs to do without starving people who didn’t have anything to do with the violence? I don’t know, but it’s an important question to ask.
The line between self-defense and bloodthirstiness gets blurry at times such as these, but it’s an important one to draw. Our tradition allows us to kill those who are trying to kill us, and it vehemently prohibits us from killing others. Let’s pray that Israel and its leaders keep to both of those crucial moral requirements as they do what they need to do.
Third, this is Shabbat B’reishit, when we Jews read the opening verses of the Torah. As I was reading the portion this week, my eyes were drawn to the story of Cain and Abel. Cain, according to the Torah, was history’s first murderer – the first person who rose up against their fellow human being and took their life. In this case, it was the life of Cain’s brother, Abel.
In 1981, Israeli poet Dan Pagis wrote about the aftermath of this murder from the perspective of Cain and Abel’s mother, Eve.
The poem is called “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car,” and its title indicates that Dan Pagis is projecting the story of Cain, Abel, and their mother Eve into the 1940s, the time of the Holocaust.
WRITTEN IN PENCIL IN THE SEALED RAILWAY-CAR
By Dan Pagis
here in this carload
i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i
I invite you to reflect for a few moments on these words. Eve sits in a railway car with the body of her murdered son. Her other son is Cain Son of Man, Kayin ben Adam, Cain Son of Adam. She searches for him, but he is far, far away. And she wants to say something to him, she wants to share what she is thinking and feeling. But when it comes time to put words to what is in her heart, she falls into silence. She writes a message, but she can’t finish the thought.
There are no words.
O God, we too sit with Abel. Abel is Ofir Libstein. Abel is Hayim Katsman. Abel is Nurit Berger, Hannah Ben Artzi, and all of the others. And Cain, the murderer is so far away…beyond touching for the moment, beyond embrace.
Cain, put down that stone! Enough killing! Enough bloodshed. Enough pain. And, God, please tell him that we…please tell him…please say….
O God, we weep tonight for our loss. We weep for the men and for the women and for the children. And we are so afraid. Bring calm to the land, O God. Please bring calm. Still, the hands of the evildoers, shield the innocent and grant Israel strength in protecting its citizens. And please, from the bottom of our hearts, we pray: bring the hostages home and bring them home safely.
Here, tonight, we sit together in solidarity with Israel, firmly committed to the struggle for all that we know to be good and holy.
Adonai oz l’amo yitein. Adonai y’vareich et amo vashalom. May God grant strength to our people, and may God bless our people with peace.
Shabbat. Shalom.
Yom Kippur Morning Sermon, September 25, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman
Shalom, dear members of Temple B’nai Tikvah, friends, and guests. On this sacred day of Yom Kippur, we gather here in the heart of Calgary, Alberta, to seek forgiveness, renewal, and spiritual transformation. As we stand together in this sacred space, let us reflect upon the profound significance of this day and the journey of self-discovery it offers us.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a time for deep introspection and reflection. It is a day when we pause to consider our actions, our relationships, and our connection to the Divine. It is a day of both solemnity and hope, a day when we confront our imperfections and strive to become better versions of ourselves.
Here, I’ll pause and ask you what you think of this sermon so far. And, don’t worry, I won’t be hurt if you don’t like it because, until a moment ago, the words of this sermon were words that I didn’t write. No, this sermon wasn’t a Rabbi Mark Glickman sermon – it was a Chat GPT sermon. Creating it was simple. I just set up an account, and then typed in “Write me a Yom Kippur sermon for Temple B’nai Tikvah in Calgary,” and within about five seconds…
…I had a sermon.
(I assure you that, from now on, the rest of my words will be ones that I wrote myself. I … promise.)
Now, Chat GPT did a passable job of writing this sermon, I suppose – it’s got lots of Yom Kippur sermons at its virtual fingertips, and it knows what they’re supposed to sound like. But, if you responded to it at all the way I did, you’ll agree that it fell kind of flat. For starters, it didn’t really sound like me. In the first sentence, for example, it had me referring to you as “dear members of Temple B’nai Tikvah community.” You are dear to me, of course, but that’s not the way I talk. It also wasn’t very creative or innovative, it was more like a bland regurgitation of sermon formulas from countless boring sermons of years past. The kind that other rabbis give. Not me. I hope.
But still, if you’ve been paying any attention to recent discussions, you’ll know that these new technologies – artificial intelligence, they’re called, AI – are likely to bring huge changes to rabbinic work in the years ahead, especially as it grows stronger. One of the biggest challenges in being a rabbi is of coming up with something new and interesting to say every week at services, and my colleagues and I put huge amounts of energy into our sermons – especially because some of those Torah portions are rough to get anything good out of. Now, we can write those sermons – at least mediocre ones – in mere seconds by just telling Chat GPT and other similar programs to write them for us, allowing us to use the remaining time for other things.
And of course, it’s not just rabbinic work that will be affected. I asked Chat GPT to suggest an itinerary for a two-week trip to Vancouver Island, and it gave me a pretty good one. It’ll compose poetry for you if you want. It will translate between languages, give you restaurant suggestions, choose birthday gifts for your friends, and write a poem for your beloved in the style of William Wordsworth if you want.
The technology is still new and highly imperfect. When I asked Chat GPT to write a biography of Rabbi Mark Glickman, it got the titles of my books right, but it made me three years younger than I actually am, and it made me a conservative rabbi.
But as the technology improves, many are concerned about what it might do. When it gets stronger, and I want to, say, purchase a certain stock at an affordable price, an AI program could conceivably spread fake news – negative news – about that company, making the price of that stock tank for just long enough for that program to buy the stock for me at a low price. Then, I would just need to wait a little while, let the market correct its value, and sell that stock for me at a profit. I’ve been on TV and radio several times over the years, and, with those recordings of my voice in its toolbox, that same AI could place a call to my mother, and, in my voice say, “Mom, my interfaith work has backfired and I’m now being held hostage in the basement of a United Church – send money to this account, or they’ll make me convert.” In all seriousness, it is possible – and most say likely – that bad actors could get their hands on this technology and do bad things with it.
Of course, our fear of technology gone bad is nothing new. For a long time now, it’s been the stuff of science fiction. You’ve seen Jurassic Park; you’ve seen or read Frankenstein; and many of you have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Open the pod bay doors, Hal.” “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Those movies are all about what happens when the work of our own human hands grows so strong that we can no longer control it.
We Jews have been aware of these dangers for centuries. When humans first developed a newfangled technology called brickmaking, their first big project was to build a tower to the sky – the Tower of Babel – and it had horrible consequences. Centuries later, according to legend, in the Spring of 1580 Rabbi Yehudah Loewe Betzalel of Prague (commonly known as the Maharal of Prague) got a couple of helpers, went out early one morning to the banks of the Moldau River, took some clay, and formed it into a “golem.”
The Golem of Prague was a large, hulking figure. It looked like a person; it walked like a person; it could listen and understand like a person, but it couldn’t talk. The Maharal named him Yosef and affectionately called him Yossele.
Some traditions say that the Maharal animated the Golem by writing one of the names of God on his forehead, or by putting one of those names on a paper that the Golem carried in his mouth. More common, however, is the tradition that the Golem carried with him not the name of God, but the seal of God – the word Emet, which means truth. To turn the Golem off, all they had to do was to erase the first letter of the word emet – an alef – and the word would become met, which means dead, and the Golem would stop and become a statue.
At the time, life was difficult for the Jews of Prague. Christian neighbors and authorities often accused them of blood libel – of using the blood of Christian children to make their matzah for Passover – and expulsion, imprisonment, and even death were very real possibilities for them every day. As a result, they needed somebody to protect them: somebody strong, somebody courageous, somebody who could manifest holiness amidst the evil that surrounded them. They needed a golem.
Indeed, the Golem protected them for a time. During the week, he would guard Prague’s Jews from all evil, then, on Friday afternoon, the Maharal would remove God’s name or the aleph in emet from his forehead to give him a little break for Shabbat, and after Shabbat, the Marahal would put the name back on the Golem’s forehead, and the Golem would get back to work. One Friday, however, the Maharal forgot to remove God’s name, and the Golem ran amok, causing all kinds of trouble. The Maharal then confronted the Golem, recited some incantations, and the Golem disintegrated into little pieces. The Maharal stored the Golem dust – the little pieces that used to make up that monster – in the attic (the genizah) of the Altneuschul in Prague, and warned that, for their own safety nobody should ever go up to the Genizah again.
You can still visit the Altneuschul in Prague, but if you do, I don’t suggest you go up to the attic.
The problem we have with all of these technologies – whether you’re talking about a golem, or you’re talking about a computer that’s supposed to help you on your spaceship, or you’re talking about new artificial intelligence programs – is that they put machines in places where we would ideally like people to be. That golem protected Jews, but unlike a person, it didn’t know when to stop getting into people’s way. Only a person, not a lump of clay, can know when the job is done.
Similarly, I don’t think you want to hear computer-composed sermons on the Days of Awe. You want a person up here – a person who, like you, finds the world baffling sometimes; a person who, like you, has things that bring him or her joy, and others that make them feel anguish; a person who struggles to learn important truths, and who maybe has something to teach every once in a while. And if you knew ahead of time that your Days of Awe services would be led by a machine, its contours determined not by human hands but by computer algorithms, I have a feeling you’d probably stay home.
We’ve all had this experience, and we’ve had it often. You buy a new whozeemawhatz, it doesn’t work; you try to get it to work, and nothing works to get it to work. Finally, in desperation, you call customer service, and there you find yourself trapped in automated voicemail hell. “For instructions in Swahili, press one; in Flemish, press two. For whozeemawhatz insights, press three; to hear the Whozeemawhatz Choir, press four.” And all you want is to talk to a person – a person who can express a little sympathy for what you’re going through, give you some wisdom, and hopefully even share a little joy with you when you fix the problem. Even if the person can’t fix your problem, when you get through to a person, at least you have a human being to share the frustration you have. But often, all they let you do is listen to recordings and press buttons on your phone, making you feel the howling isolation of modern, high-tech life.
Yes, the central challenge of this bold new AI world of ours is one of dehumanization, of striving for efficiency and perfection by taking the person out of the equation. Human beings can be inefficient by nature, of course. We’re finite, we can only do so much; we make mistakes, and some of them are doozies; and from time to time we can even be cruel. But even with all of these shortcomings, what we humans need most as we navigate the challenges of life are other humans. Even when we can’t do everything. Even when we screw up. Even when we’re mean and offensive. This, I would suggest is the great challenge of the 21st Century. We are more connected than ever; we are more advanced than ever; and in these days of voicemail labyrinths and malfunctioning webpages and Chat GPT, we need other people, in some ways more than ever before.
Even though our sages never had artificial intelligence software, I think they were aware of this problem. For proof, I’ll draw your attention to a phrase from the ancient Rabbi Hillel that comes from Pirke Avot.
“In a place where there are no people,” Hillel taught, “strive to be a person.” I’ll say that again: “In a place where there are no people strive to be a person.”
I first learned that passage decades ago, and I always understood it to refer to our moral and ethical behavior: In a school cafeteria where one kid is sitting alone, be the kid to sit with her. In the American Jim Crow South, be the diner-owner who serves food to African Americans. In World War II Poland, be the farmer who hides Jews from the Nazis.
But today, in our world, Hillel’s ancient teaching has a new meaning. It speaks, of course, to a place in which there are no people. Where is that place today? It can be anywhere! You’re in that place when you call customer service and can’t get through to a living human being. You’re there when you get a “friend request” on social media only to realize that it’s not a person but just some bot trying to get your money. You’d be there if you came to services and heard a sermon not by your rabbi but by a really smart and highly unhuman computer. In fact, you’re there whenever this increasingly efficient, increasingly machinated, increasingly high-tech world of ours takes a person out of your field of contact and replaces it with a machine.
In a world such as this, the challenge of Hillel is a challenge for us all: Be. A. Person. Do things that are quintessentially human. Do things that machines can’t do. Be human because we all need humans in our lives, and these damned machines are chasing humans away.
What does that mean? Well, you know what it means. It means: Call up an old friend when something happens to jog a memory of them. It means: Make a point of kissing your loved ones when you come home…because machines rarely kiss, and when they do, I’m told that it’s highly unsatisfying. It means coming to Temple – in person when you can – because we need to sing with you. It means celebrating and laughing and crying and doing all of those old-fashioned things that all of the algorithms computing daily life nowadays are trying to marginalize.
Indeed, one of the great gifts of Jewish life is the clarion call to being a human – to doing things that only human beings can do. It calls upon us to pray in a minyan – to find other Jews who will sit together with us to worship. It calls upon us to love one another, and love is a human emotion, not a machine emotion. It calls upon us to show compassion, pursue justice, visit the sick, and do a host of other things that can only be done by people, not machines, even in this age of growing technological gadgetry.
In a place where there are no humans, strive to be a human. Hillel uttered those words more than 2,000 years ago. Think of how ancient that teaching is, and think of how modern it is, too.
I don’t fully know what the future will bring with these new technologies. But what I do know is that they all tend to dehumanize our world, and it is up to us to keep it human. For many of us, I think that at some level it is this very desire that brought us here today. You could have stayed home and watched services online, but you chose to sit in a room with hundreds of your fellow Temple members – to connect with them, hopefully, as individuals and as a community. And maybe to connect with generations past and future. And maybe to share something in your heart with God, in the hope that God will share back. You came here, in other words, because it is what your humanity has called you to do.
Let’s all continue to respond to that call. Because in this decreasingly human world, when machines stand in places formerly occupied by people, we as Jews and as humans, are much better off when we maintain our humanity. And being truly human is something that only we humans can do.
Shanah Tovah.
Kol Nidre Sermon, September 24, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman
In one of the Talmud’s most famous stories, a non-Jewish man goes up to the great Rabbi Shammai and says, “Convert me to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while standing on one foot.” Shammai presumably muttered under his breath something to the effect of “I can’t teach you the whole Torah while standing on one foot,” and Shammai pushed him away with a builder’s tool that he was holding.
The non-Jew then approached Shammai’s colleague, Rabbi Hillel, and asked him the same question. “Convert me to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while standing on one foot.” Hillel’s response was different. Hillel converted the man, and then said,
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.”
Hillel’s response is as profound as it is simple. The Golden Rule – or at least Judaism’s version of it – is the Torah. And everything else – all the stories, the rituals, the social laws, and all the rest – is simply a commentary on this verse.
Many people who study this passage forget the second part of what Hillel said – the “go and study part” – but that part is just as important as the first part, because figuring out how to keep that Golden Rule can be very complicated.
Nonetheless, Hillel argued that the entire Torah can be boiled down to that single ethical principle, a principle that could easily be taught to a curious student while standing on one foot, and that Judaism’s essential teaching is all based on not doing to others what we wouldn’t want others to do to us.
Jump ahead 2000 years. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Marla Subeck-Spanjer, tells the story about how, as a young, single rabbi, she took a position at a small congregation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Shortly after she arrived, she broke her ankle in several places and had to move around on crutches with her leg all bandaged up. One day, she went to a community meeting of some sort, where she got a name tag, saying “Hello, my name is Rabbi Subeck.” After the meeting, having forgotten to take off the name tag, she crutched her way into a store across the street from her temple to do an errand. As the then Rabbi Subeck stood at the counter, tottering on her one working foot and two crutches, the storekeeper, looked at her nametag and said, “Oh, you’re a rabbi? I’ve always wondered about Judaism. Tell me all about it.”
There she was, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, being asked to tell a non-Jew all there was to know about Judaism while standing on one foot. “The worst part about it,” she told me later, “was that there was nobody there I could laugh about it with!”
Laughter aside, the question that the non-Jewish interrogator from the Talmud posed to these hopping rabbis is an important one. What, when it comes right down to it, is Judaism all about? We know, of course, some of the tangential things that Judaism is all about. It’s about kugel and knishes, bagels and bialys, synagogues and federations, Shabbat and Yom Kippur, and other holidays too numerous to list. It’s about that indescribable connection we sometimes feel with other Jews. It’s about study and Tikkun Olam, wonderful music, and it’s about responding to every mention of Israel in the media with an impressed “Oh, wow,” a pained “Oy vey,” and usually some combination of the two. It’s about what in Yiddish we call Yiddishkeit – Jewishness – in all of its many and various dimensions.
But what is it essentially? What is it at its core? Hillel gave one answer, and it’s an important one. Tonight, I’d like to add a couple of other answers that other sages from our tradition provided, each with wisdom of its own.
One of those answers comes from the great Rabbi Akiva. To the best of our knowledge, Rabbi Akiva wasn’t ever approached by a non-Jew hopping on one foot and demanding answers about the Torah, but he did offer his own teaching on what he saw as Judaism’s core principle. The Midrash teaches us that Akiva said that the greatest principle of Torah is a simple, three-word teaching from Leviticus – the portion that we read on Yom Kippur: “V’ahahvta l’re’echa kamocha. Love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s a simple phrase, but it too, like Hillel’s favorite, is rife with complexity. The Torah commands us to “love our neighbor.” How can God reasonably command us to love anything? God can command us to do all kinds of things, but to love? When my kids were little, I tried commanding them to love brussels sprouts. It didn’t get me very far at all. Later, I tried telling them to love the people whom I had chosen to be their spouses, and, to my dismay, I learned that things just don’t work like that anymore. Love is a feeling and feelings (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor) have minds of their own. Love doesn’t happen on command; it’s far more spontaneous than that.
Plus, the Torah says that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s odd. The Torah could have just said “Love your neighbor” and called it good. But it added this “as yourself” part. What if I don’t love myself very much? Does that mean I can be a jerk to my neighbor? And what if I show love to myself by letting myself eat pancakes three meals a day? Does this mean I should constantly feed pancakes to my neighbor, too? Probably not.
I don’t know for sure what God really meant by this commandment, and I don’t know for sure why Akiva chose it as the Torah’s core principle. But I have a feeling that it had something to do with Judaism’s constant insistence that we look beyond ourselves. Judaism refuses to let us get stuck on what’s inside us, and instead always demands that we translate our inside feeling into outside action. In Judaism, it’s not good enough to think about lighting Shabbat candles, you actually have to light them. It’s not good enough to feel compassion for the suffering of other people, though that’s important. Our compassion only counts when we translate it into action – visiting the sick, sharing with the poor, helping the fallen stand up. Outside things.
Telling us to love our neighbors as ourselves, I think, is a command to take what we know on the inside and cast it outward. You know yourself pretty well (even though your spouse or your therapist might know you better), and, Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, on a day-to-day level, you’re probably pretty tuned in to who you are what you are, and why you do most of the things you do. It’s unlikely that anybody understands your complexity better than you do, and sensitivity to the fullness of one’s self is the beginning of love.
But loving yourself is only the beginning. Self-love only counts when we externalize it when we use it to propel us to love others who are beyond the boundaries of the self
You have dreams, and so do your neighbors. You struggle to find your way, so do your neighbors. You fall short sometimes – sometimes for a good reason, and always for some reason. The same is true of your neighbors. There are times when you feel joy, and times when you suffer, and times when you’re baffled, and times when you don’t want to think about any of it and just want to watch Netflix instead. The same is true of each and every human being. And as a human being, you are worthy of love even when you don’t think you merit it. So is everyone else. So love your neighbor, for just like you, they too are magnificent if flawed human beings.
So now we have two takes on what the most central teaching of our tradition is – one that calls upon us to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated and another that calls upon us to love them. A third answer to this question comes from another of our ancient sages. In the very same Midrashic passage telling us what Akiva felt was the most important passage in the Torah, Akiva’s colleague, Ben Azzai, disagrees, and instead weighs in with his own suggestion.
Even greater than the command to love our neighbors as ourselves is a seemingly throwaway line from the beginning of the fifth chapter of Genesis: “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”
Whaaat? In the Torah, this line seems, as I said, like a throwaway – a simple introduction to the text’s account of Adam and Eve’s genealogy after Cain and Abel. But Ben Azzai sees this commandment as even more central, more important, more profound than the commandment to love our neighbors.
Why? Maybe it’s because this little line might be trying to tell us what the Torah, and what Judaism as a whole, is really about. Many people see the Torah as a story that is ultimately about Jews and Jews only. Ben Azzai seems to reject this perspective. Torah is a story for Jews, but it is the story. And for Jews, the story is the story of humanity – a story that includes us but is also much, much bigger. Torah is the story of the generations of Adam, the first human being; not of Abraham, the first Jew. And when we focus on our own story to the exclusion of the story of others, we betray the meaning of what it means to be a Jew. Being a Jew isn’t just about making sure Jews do well, Ben Azzai is saying, it’s about making sure we all do well. It’s about making sure that all children of Adam – Jews and non-Jews alike – come to be able to enjoy God’s blessings.
An Orthodox rabbi in a community where I used to live once refused to participate in a community-wide anti-hunger campaign, arguing that, the problem with the proposed campaign was that it aimed to feed all hungry people, not just Jews, and Jews need to worry about feeding our own hungry people first. To him I respond, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”
Last February, a Palestinian gunman murdered two Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara. In response, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the town, burning up to 200 buildings to the ground and killing at least one Palestinian. Rather than criticizing the continued violence, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. To him I respond, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”
There are those who criticize Reform Judaism for having universalist concerns about the suffering of non-Jews as well as concerns about the suffering of Jews. Here, my response and the response of us all should be clear. “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”
Three ancient sages. Three suggestions as to what is Judaism’s most central teaching. Here, as in most places, these rabbis disagree with one another, and yet, somehow, their suggestions all seem to echo the same theme. Look beyond yourself. See the humanity of others. Treat people with kindness whenever you can, because you as a human being know how important it is.
I think that each of these rabbis in his own way was trying to teach this insight. They seem to be telling us that God is trying to get this point across. Yes, life is hard, but remember that it’s hard for others too, so be compassionate. Fight if you must, but never forget the humanity of your opponent, and always strive to make the world more humane.
Transcend yourself for something greater. Transcend yourself for a better world. Transcend yourself, so others can do the same. Transcend yourself, to make the world the way it can be.
What is Judaism? How can we boil it down to something we can teach while standing on one foot? Maybe this is it. Be kind. Be just. Look beyond yourself. For when you do, you can help make this world the way it’s supposed to be for us all. This, perhaps, is truly what Judaism is all about.
Shanah Tovah.