Organic Torah A resource for living wisdom in a complex world

At the Passover Seder we do a lot of talking and a lot of eating. Over the centuries, the Jewish people have found that this combination of food and talk makes for a great ritual: somewhere in the middle of all that fressing and kibbitzing, meaning emerges.

But when meaning emerges organically from words, objects and actions, as it does at the Seder, it is the opposite of “cut and dry.”  It is often paradoxical and impossible to put into a simple formulation. It is more like good literature: subtle and powerful.

One of my favorite examples of how the ancient Sages used the techniques of literature to tell us something about the meaning of the Seder comes from the earliest compilation of Jewish Law, the Mishnah. Composed around 200 CE by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the Mishnah is the backbone of the Talmud.  In the tractate Pesachim which deals with the laws of Passover we find the chapter dealing with the Seder starts like this:

1. On the eve of Passover, when it is close to the time of the minchah afternoon offering, no one should eat until it gets dark. And even the poorest person in the people of Israel should not eat without reclining. And they should not provide him with less than the four cups of wine, even if it means using money from community funds.

2. They poured him the first cup. The House of Shamai says bless first over the holiday and afterword over the wine. The House of Hillel says, bless the wine, and afterword on the holiday.

Now, I ask you: “Who is the “him” referring to in the beginning of mishnah 2?” It’s kind of a trick question because the answer is “it depends.” If you read the second mishnah on its own you would say that the “him” refers to the head of the household, the leader of the Seder.  But we could also read the second mishnah as a continuation of the narrative of first mishnah, in which case the “him” would be the same as the “him” of the first mishnah: the poorest of the poor.

With one pronoun, the authors of the Mishnah have subtly hinted at the central and paradoxical points of the Seder: that poor person and I are one!

As a Jew, I (in my collective self) was once a slave in Egypt and I need to have compassion for the oppressed. At the Seder we say, “Every person is obligated to look at themselves as if they themselves went out from Egypt.”  I need to know that that poor, homeless person has the same dignity of being created in the image of God as I do, and I need to know that as comfortable as I may be in my home, surrounded by family and friends, I also am in need of redemption: from my own personal Egypt, from the fears, the habits, the addictions that narrow my vision and choke off my potential.

As I bite into the matzah I can experience it both as the “bread of affliction” – dry, lacking any spice or flavor, and also, in its simplicity, just flour and water, as the bread of freedom. I can learn from the matzah that simply being myself: without illusions of false pride or harsh judgment, is to be free.

When I’m well into the four cups of wine and start to feel a little fuzzy, I can begin to imagine that I am both a slave leaving Egypt, and also sitting at my table, free to play hide and seek for the Afikoman with my kids. I can look at the Mishnah at the beginning of Tractate Pesachim and read “him” as both the comfortable Seder leader, and also the poor person at the door. And then I can open the door, inviting all who are hungry to enter, inviting Oneness to enter my heart.

There’s a guy driving his car in New York City. He has a very important meeting to get to and he can’t find a parking space. Desperate, he starts praying to God.

“Please, God, find me a parking space! I promise I’ll go to shul every Shabbat.  I’ll give ten percent of my income to tzedakah!”

Suddenly, a car pulls out right in front of him and there’s his parking space.

He quickly says, “Oh, never mind. I found one.”

This usually gets a pretty good laugh. But I think it also has an important point. It doesn’t really matter what the outside “evidence” or circumstances are. It is up to us to interpret the events of our lives. We can find miracles or we can find coincidences. We can find a Greater Consciousness or we can find our ego.

In synagogues, the section of the torah currently being read is from Exodus. It deals with building the Tabernacle, the Dwelling Place of God within the camp of the Israelites in the desert. One verse that many rabbis have noted says, “asu li mik’dash ve’shakhanti b’tokham”  “Make me a sanctuary and I will dwell within you.”  They point out that it doesn’t say, “within it (the sanctuary) but “within you.”  Even in the ancient world there was a recognition that the goal is not to build buildings, but to internalize a sense of God’s presence within ourselves.

And, also even in the ancient world, there was a recognition that there may be intellectual objections to finding God. How do we even know there is a God? Where can we see God’s working in the world? Even in the time of the Talmud people had doubts.

There is a discussion of this issue in the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin (102b).  In it the seemingly technical, ritual question is asked, “What place on the bread is one supposed to point to when you say the blessing over the bread?” The answer given is that one must bless the bread right at the place where it first starts to form a crust. The explanation is that we seem to do all the work of making bread. We plow and plant, harvest and thresh, grind and bake. Where was God in this process that we should bless God, saying “Who brings forth bread from the earth?”  Didn’t we do it?  The answer is that when you put the bread into the oven there is no way that one could tell where exactly on the bread a crust would begin to form. There was something, in other words, about the process that they couldn’t explain.

But, wait a minute! This looks like one of the weakest arguments for the existence of God: it’s called “The God of the Gaps.”  People will find something that we can’t explain and then say “There, you see, there must be a God!”  But, it’s not a strong argument because if we are basing our belief in God on these areas that we can’t explain, in other words, if God lives in the gaps in our knowledge, then the place for God keeps getting smaller and smaller until there is no place.   This is a major theme in the history of the conflict between science and religion: science keeps coming along and explaining things: how all the species got here, how the world was formed, etc., and fewer and fewer people have a need for God.

So, is that really the argument that the Talmud is making?  I don’t think so. And I think we can find out about the Talmud’s answer by looking at some of the more recent trends in science.

Since the middle of the 20^th century, there has been a trend in science which has not filled in more gaps, but rather has shown us that there are things are can never know.  In 1927 Werner Heisenberg published his Uncertainty Principle showing that there are things about the movements of atomic particles that are theoretically impossible to know.  In 1931 Kurt Godel published his mathematical Incompleteness Theorem which proved that there will never be a completely provable mathematics.  More recently we have seen the emergence of Complex Systems Theory. This says that in a complex system, a system with internal feedback loops (which includes a lot of what we experience in the world: weather, social trends, eco systems, economic systems, and many more) there is no way that we can predict what the individual in a system will do. I might know that there is 7.9% unemployment, but there is no way that we can say exactly who will be unemployed next year. We can say it will be cold in February in the North Eastern United States, but we can’t say exactly when the next storm is going to hit.

So, science is coming back to something that I think the Sages of the Talmud were talking about: There are things in this world that we can never control or predict. There is an essential openness, freedom and mystery that is built into the structure of the world.  There are gaps that will never be filled.  So, it is up to us.  In those places in life where there is no explanation, what do we do with it?  How do we interpret it?  This is also the theme of the holiday which was celebrated a couple of weeks ago: On Purim we read the Megillah in which God’s name is never mentioned. It is a story of chance and coincidence. People’s fate is either determined by the throw of a dice (according to Haman) or it is a meaningful opportunity to exercise our free choice and serve a higher calling (according to Esther).

We have the same choice. In our lives we can look at the parking space open up and say “never mind, I found one.” Or we can marvel at the mystery and give thanks.

Organic Torah announces the Spring 2013 semester of
Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim!

“Rabbi Natan is masterful at establishing an environment that promotes real learning.”
– Leann Shamash, Synagogue Education Director, Class Participant

“Fabulous class!  The concept of Organic Torah brings out the depth of the text.”
– Rabbi Katy Allen, Hospital Chaplain, Class Participant

Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim is a new institution that offers an ancient/modern approach to learning.  We offer graduate-level study in the tradition of a beit midrash, which is a place where Jews have debated ideas and explored texts for generations in a lively atmosphere of joy in learning.  The core texts of Judaism are central: we study in the original language, with the help of dictionaries and each other, in a lively hevruta style (in pairs) and in open discussion. Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim is pluralistic and open to all who wish to enter into the centuries-long, on-going Jewish conversation of Living Torah – Torat Chayyim.

SPRING 2013 CLASSES
Rabbi Natan Margalit, instructor
Location: Temple Beth Zion (TBZ),1566 Beacon St., Brookline, MA 02446

Rabbinic Writings: Kiddushin
Tuesdays, 9:00am – 10:30am
10 class sessions, beginning Feb. 26

In this class students will work on the skills to read the classics of Rabbinic literature: the Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmud.  We will study Tractate Kiddushin and will focus on the Mishnah as our base text, with excursions into other rabbinic genres, biblical texts and commentaries.  Following an organic approach, we will explore the internal patterns of the text, uncovering core ideas such as the distinction between gift and commodity, the connections between marriage, community and ethics, and the shifting boundaries of Jewish peoplehood.

Chassidut on the Weekly Parshah: Mei HaShiloach
Wednesdays, 9:00am – 10:30am
10 class sessions, beginning Feb. 27

In this class we will explore the radical spiritual psychology of the Ishbitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Mordecai Yoseph Leiner of Isbica, Poland. He is known for pushing the limits of the traditional Jewish worldview with his teachings on free will (or the lack thereof), halakhah and intuition.  We will read the original text, following the weekly parshah.

Please Note:  If you received an e-mail about the previous semester’s classes, we apologize; we erred with our blog software.  Thank you for your patience with us in the process of starting this new center for Jewish learning!

Notes for all classes

Basic Hebrew reading ability is required, as we will engage in the exciting process of working through the classic texts in the original.  Discussion will be in English.  To encompass a range of Hebrew skills, the instructor will provide translations of key words and we will work with the help of dictionaries, hevruta partners and classmates.

To get the full benefit from the classes, preparation of the texts outside of class, either with a partner or on your own, is recommended, as well as some outside reading (in English).  Student projects, either written or oral, may be undertaken by those who wish to obtain credit through other institutions, or for those who wish to do them their own benefit. Classes will be recorded and posted on a private website to facilitate discussion, questions and review among participants.

Tuition: $450 per course, or $200 for online-only.  Please make checks payable to  Organic Torah  and mail to the address below, or visit our website at  www.organictorah.org  to make your registration payment online.

Or contact us to arrange for your group to set up classes by conference call.  Work-study fellowships available.

Register and pay by February 20 to get $50 off full tuition, or $25 off online-only!

Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim is a project of Organic Torah, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.  Your donations to fund Beit Midrash scholarships are also gratefully accepted.

We are grateful to Temple Beth Zion (TBZ) for their generosity in housing Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim.

Organic Torah, Inc.
c/o Rabbi Natan Margalit
81 Brookside Ave.
Newtonville, MA 02460

Join us at the Boston Jewish Food Conference!  The Conference will be Sunday, March 3, from 10:30am to 6:00pm at Tufts University Hillel (click here for location and map).  Among the many amazing opportunities for body and soul at the Food Conference, stop by these:

Beit Midrash

What constitutes a responsible Jewish food ethic today?  What does Jewish tradition have to teach us about sustainability, justice, and mindful eating? In our community Beit Midrash (House of Study) at this year’s food conference we will participate in an ongoing process of Jewish learning. We invite you to explore and engage with us in study and discussion of Jewish texts and our own values and experiences. We’ll delve into traditional, historical and contemporary sources, exploring issues of labor rights, environment and health. The only prerequisite is that you eat on a regular basis!

Rabbi Natan will co-lead this year’s Beit Midrash with Rabbi Toba Spitzer of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in Newton.

Finding Local, Kosher Meat

What does one need to do to get a supply of local, organic, free range, and Kosher meat? It is not easy. In this workshop the co-leaders tell of our experiences in trying to bring all these things together. The joys and the pitfalls, the frustrations and the rewards; what can we learn from these expereinces in moving forward and acheiving our goal of feeding our families humane, healthy, and kosher meat?

Rabbi Natan will lead this workshop.

An Honest Prayer: Providence and Uncertainty in Birkat Hamazon

Birkat Hamazon is often recited by observant Jews, but seldom studied as a text.  With the help of a new English translation that is both literal and singable, we will discover surprising insights into Israel’s relationship with God, as mediated by food.  Exploring the Rabbis’ view of our religious ties to the agricultural process, we will engage the ancient prayer from farm to table to soul.

Jeremy Sher, a student at Organic Torah’s Beit Midrash Torat Chayyim, will lead this workshop.

See You There!

Click here to register for the Boston Jewish Food Conference:
http://www.beantownjewishgardens.org/boston-jewish-food-conference/registration/

This Thursday we will all gather for the American holiday of Thanksgiving. While it’s not a Jewish holiday, the common focus on consuming plentiful quantities of delicious food touches on a “Jewish issue.” Jews have a long and complicated relationship with food. It goes back to that forbidden fruit in the Garden, to the biblical laws of kashrut and continues on with bagels and chicken soup and to Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and the new Jewish sustainable food movement. We also have a long and deep relationship with thankfulness. The name “Jew” comes from Yehuda, which means “thankful.” So, it is a good time to ask, “What are the Jewish ethics relating to food?”

Once we “dig in” (so to speak) to the subject of food, it is clear that it is entwined with so many areas of life: whether we are conscious of it or not it puts us in daily relationship with the earth, from which almost all our food comes, so food is an environmental issue. It is one of the most important factors in our health. It is produced by farmers, laborers, and a variety of other workers, so it relates to issues of economic justice. It is a family and social occasion to sit down to eat, so it is an issue of interpersonal relationships, and it is one of the primary areas of sensual, physical, desire, and so it relates to issues of moral and spiritual development.

We could spend a semester on this but let me now focus on just one point in the Jewish ethics of food. Starting from The Beginning – Genesis, Chapter One, God tells the first humans,

“See, I give you every seed bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food” (Genesis 1:29).

It is clear that the first intention of God in creation was that humans should be vegetarians! It is only after the flood, after God has realized that humans are not, perhaps, up to all God’s original high expectations, that there is a dispensation to eat meat. The speech that God gives to Noah and his sons when they leave the ark clearly is another “creation” speech. The language and content remind us of Genesis Chapter One, but with important differences:

“God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky — everything with which the earth is astir — and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these. You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it” (Genesis 9:1-4).

Now, humans are allowed to eat meat, but with the important caveat that we are not allowed to eat the blood. The blood is the symbol of the life. Moreover, in biblical Hebrew the word for life is actually the same as soul, so the verse might be translated “You must not, however, eat flesh with its soul-blood in it.” In other places in the Torah we learn that the biblical practice was ideally to pour the blood onto the altar. The message is that, since humans have proved ourselves unable to fulfill the original intent of being vegetarians, we are allowed to eat animal meat, but we may not delude ourselves that the life/soul of the animals is ours. God is the author of all life and we are not to be as gods, claiming for ourselves the life/soul of the animals.

This biblical prohibition on eating blood is taken up by the rabbis as one of the foundations of the laws of kashrut, the kosher dietary laws. To this day these laws are practiced by Jews. However, we don’t often enough reflect on their original meaning: though we may eat animal flesh, animals possess a life given by God. That life deserves respect. The prohibition on eating blood is meant to remind us of this fact. This prohibition needs to be taken together with another biblical commandment never to cause unnecessary pain to animals.

In this perspective, the Jewish ethics of eating speaks clearly against the practices we see today in the industrial production of meat. The vast majority of meat produced today in the U.S. comes from huge factory farms in which the animals are crowded together, fed fattening food not their natural diet, and then given antibiotics in order to keep them healthy enough in these inhumane conditions to reach the slaughterhouse. They are reduced, in other words, to units of meat production, not animate beings with a God-given life.

We are blessed with many gifts, and Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to recognize and enjoy the bounty that reaches our tables. But, especially if we are eating meat, whether or not we are eating kosher, we can still be informed by this three thousand year old wisdom from the Torah: the life of the animal is a sacred gift from God. We are only permitted to eat it on the condition that we recognize that fact. For us today this means looking to the best of our ability at how the animal was raised and treated. Did the farmer who raised this animal treat it with respect? Was its slaughter done in the most humane way possible?

In my experience, when I know the whole story of what I’m eating, when I know that it was treated with the respect due to a sacred gift from the farm to my table, I am able to bless the food — to really say thank you with all my being. My full belly is accompanied by a full heart.

I’m trying to understand why sitting outside, with barely a thatching of roof over my head, leafy bits dripping into my food, in the nippy fall weather, on a hard folding chair propped on uneven ground, is the way we celebrate what is supposed to be the most joyful of all the festivals of the Jewish calendar.

It says in Leviticus 23 that the Israelites should live in booths for the seven days of Sukkot, which is not so surprising since it’s a harvest festival, and we can imagine that during the harvest time people might have lived in temporary huts so that they could be closer to the fields and not waste precious time walking back to their homes miles away. It makes some sense that the harvest festival would make a ritual out of the harvest hut.

But then the Torah gives a strange reason for sitting in a sukkah: “In order that your generations will know that I caused the people to live in Sukkot (huts or booths), when I took them out of Egypt.”  (Lev. 23:43)

What does the Exodus from Egypt have to do with the harvest festival? First of all, the Israelites went out of Egypt in the spring, and this is the fall. Second, and more importantly: what booths? Until now, we have never heard about any booths or huts in the desert! This is the first mention of these dwellings. And why are we suddenly talking about the desert during the harvest festival?

I think we get a hint at what’s behind this when we look at Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, verses 11-17:

“Beware lest thou forget the Lord thy God, in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command thee this day; lest when thou hast eaten and art satisfied, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; who led thee through the great and dreadful wilderness, wherein were serpents, fiery serpents, and scorpions, and thirsty ground where was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might afflict thee, and that He might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; and thou say in thy heart: ‘My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth.’”

It is in this passage from Deuteronomy that we see the relationship between the desert and the harvest. The sense of wealth from the harvest can create a spiritually dangerous situation. The Israelites could say, “My power, the might of my hand, has gotten me this wealth.” The desert experience, with its complete deprivation of any possibility of the people providing for themselves, their complete dependence on God for food, clothing — everything — is meant to be a reminder during the season of plenty that we didn’t do it all by ourselves.

So, the idea of sitting in a sukkah to remind us of the desert experience makes more sense: At the time when we are full of ourselves, we need to remember the time of dependence, and of our reliance on God to provide for our needs.

And yet, I have more questions: Why the sukkah? Why not just say: remember the desert? And also, the desert doesn’t sound all that pleasant. In fact, the Torah says that it was a test for the Israelites. Eating the manna is described as “afflicting us,” but the festival specifically says that this is a time of joy.

Let’s look at the sukkah: its main feature is the roof. That’s the only part that really counts. To make it a kosher sukkah, the roof must be impermanent; it must be made of things that grow from the ground, but are no longer growing. It must provide shade, and it is good if a little space is left so that you can still see the stars in between.

The sukkah represents that sweet spot between two extremes: In the desert, we were forced to be like infants, totally dependent, and that is not an easy or pleasant thing for adults. That was the extreme of the desert, necessary for the generation that had been slaves in Egypt. They must have needed those years of total dependence on God in the desert wanderings in order to heal from the trauma of slavery. But it was a trial, and not the ideal.

On the other side: We can build ourselves into isolation. When we build houses, permanent houses, we isolate, and we are in danger of making the statement that we can somehow protect ourselves, that we can control our lives and our fate and that, if we use enough sturdy bricks, like in the story of the three little pigs, nothing can come and blow our houses down.

Where do we find security if building stronger walls, higher barriers or taller towers isn’t the answer? We can only find security in relationship: relationship to the Earth, relationship to one another, and relationship to God. And relationships are constantly evolving; they can change day to day. They are never so secure that you can take them for granted, or not pay attention to them, but they provide a kind of security that is stronger than any walls.

Looking at the shifting light coming through the corn stalk roof of our sukkah, I can feel the beauty of this paradox. That roof is the secret to really enjoying the bounty that we harvest – it keeps us in relationship. We need to be open a bit, vulnerable enough to accept change, open enough to enter into a relationship which can never be set in stone, locked away for safe keeping. We build, we protect ourselves and make our mark, but we always leave a little opening, a few cracks to see the stars, to imagine that not our own power and the strength of our hands that protects us, but rather the relationships that we build, perhaps even the wings of the Shechina, hovering between the stars and the earth, lovingly sheltering our lives like a mother bird over her young. And so what if a few leaves drop in the food? It’s kind of like camping in your back yard, the food just tastes better even with a few leaves in it.