Longing

Jewish Meditations on a Hidden God

David

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532631368
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Longing is a universal human experience, born of the inevitable gulf between dream and reality, what we need and what we have. While the experience of longing may arise from loss or the awareness of a void in one's life, it may also become a powerful engine of spiritual growth, prompting one to draw closer to the hidden yet present "Other."Across the range of Jewish teachings, longing takes center stage in one's spiritual life. From the Bible through current frontiers in Jewish belief and practice, God is both known and unknown, immediate and remote, present and in constant eclipse.This book captures the sense of longing in Jewish tradition by creating a dialogue between the author's own struggles with an estranged father and a wide range of traditional and contemporary sources. Focusing on the story of the Hebrew prophet Elisha, the book takes the reader through a journey of abandonment, creative destruction, and ultimately repair and healing, engaging with currents in biblical theology, rabbinic thought, Kabbalah, and contemporary Jewish philosophy. Written in a familiar yet probing style, this book is an accessible introduction to Jewish thought and spirituality as well as a thoughtful companion for more experienced students.

Part 1

Beginnings

The Loss and Inauguration of Elisha the Prophet

2 Kings 2:1–15

(1) When God was about to take up Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha journeyed from Gilgal. (2) Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here, for Adonai has sent me to Beit El. Elisha said, “As God lives and as you live, I will not abandon you,” and they went down to Beit El. (3) Disciples of the prophets of Beit El went out to Elisha and said to him, “Do you not know that today God will take your master from you?” And he said, “I surely know. Be silent.”

(4) Elijah said to him, “Elisha, please stay here, for God has sent me to Jericho.” Elisha said, “As God lives and as you live, I will not abandon you,” and they arrived at Jericho. (5) Disciples of the prophets approached Elisha in Jericho and they said to him, “Do you not know that today God will take your master from you?” Elisha said, “I surely know. Be silent.”

(6) Elijah said to him, “Please stay here, for God has sent me to the Jordan.” He said, “As God lives and as you live, I will not abandon you,” and they walked on together. (7) Then fifty men from among the Disciples of the prophets followed and stood opposite them from a distance, and the two of them stood by the Jordan. (8) Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up and struck the water, dividing it evenly in two, so that they both crossed over on dry ground. (9) As they were crossing, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “May a double portion of your spirit be upon me.” (10) He said, “You have asked something difficult. If you see me as I am taken from you, it will be so. And if not, it will not be so.” (11) As they were walking and speaking with each other, there was a chariot of fire, and horses of fire. They separated the two of them and raised Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind. (12) Elisha saw it, and he cried out, “Avi, Avi! My father, my father! Chariot of Israel and its horsemen!” And then he saw no more. He grabbed his garments and rent them in two strips.

(13) He raised the mantle of Elijah which had fallen from him, and returned and stood on the bank of the Jordan. (14) He took the mantle of Elijah which had fallen from him and struck the water and said, “Where is Adonai, the God of Elijah?!” And even he, as he struck the water, divided it evenly in two and Elisha crossed over. (15) The Disciples of the prophets at Jericho saw him from a distance and said, “The spirit of Elijah has come to rest upon Elisha!” And they came to greet him, and they bowed low to the ground in front of him.

Chapter 1

Pulling Away

The beginning of a spiritual life may be a vague but abiding yearning. For every insight or bit of knowledge we may glean through reflection, meditation, prayer, study, or a meaningful experience, we are intrigued even more by what remains hidden. It may seem absurd, even Kafkaesque, to devote ourselves to a hidden reality that rarely shows its face, but in a spiritual life, concealment is actually its own reward and pleasure. This has been my particular experience in my own spiritual exploration and pursuit of Jewish life, and in sharing these thoughts I am echoing the great Hasidic master from the nineteenth century, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.

In his introduction to his definitive work, Likkutei MoHaRaN, which means the Gleanings of Our Teacher Rebbe Nachman, he declares, “Behold, for the Holy One has given you a great treasure. Things that reside at the heights of the universe!” Treasure, of course, is often buried, and who among us can find the heights of the universe? Spiritual insights are deep because they are hidden, clothed in a new form, and as such are both understood and obscured: “. . . by way of limitations and ongoing distillation from above to below, from the supernal intelligence to the lower intelligence, until it is cloaked in the garments, the thoughts of our Sages.”3

And yet, even in their concealed state, spiritual insights may change our lives:

Each and every teaching (Torah) that was revealed to the “treasured people,” all were filled with wondrous insights for true service of the exalted Creator . . . to rouse the slumbering and wake those who sleep, . . . to release from prison those who dwell in darkness, . . . to return them to God in truth and on a clear path, set out before them, along the path walked by our ancestors forever.4

However, the nature of these discoveries is that, whatever we think we have grasped, there is always more to know:

Behold, even though these matters are revealed and understood a bit through the meaning of their words, nevertheless there is more within them . . . for there is still inwardness in these matters, locked up and sealed beyond everything. For they are matters that the Ancient of Days concealed. That require being concealed and revealed. In order to bring into this world. For that which is concealed is that which is revealed.5

When we seek to know with a knowledge that springs from our sense of awe and wonder, we can anticipate the delight and surprise of discovery. But the more profound that discovery, the more we will feel the elusiveness, the “hiddenness,” of that which we seek.

Beresheet—A First, Wondrous Word

I trace my own spiritual life to my teenage years, when the Torah came alive for me with its first word, “Beresheet.” Actually, more had come alive for me already, but that first word, “Beresheet,” represented the excitement of knowing and not knowing at the same time. I had just returned from my first trip to Israel, a six-week tour during which I fell for the country, its landscape, language, and culture. I felt passionate emotional stirrings—for connection to the Jewish past and present; for spiritual connection, friendships, and romance—they were all tied in the same bundle. Later, I would come to name these stirrings as “hitlahavut,” literally “being on fire,” a condition of soul described in the literature of Jewish mysticism, particularly the Hasidic masters beginning in the eighteenth century. I would return to this feeling again and again in the years ahead to reinvigorate my spiritual life, confirm its authenticity, and continue to explore new dimensions of wonder. But for now, it was simply a newfound feeling of love, enthusiasm, and curiosity. As a “welcome home” present to help guide me on what they anticipated would be my new path, my mother and stepfather gave me a humash, a bound version of the Torah with commentary, knowing I should have something to build on after this experience. I opened the cover and, as is the custom, there is the first word, printed in bold and enlarged block letters in Hebrew—Beresheet.

At the time, I had no idea what the word meant out of context, but seeing it right there, at the beginning, with the special typography, I immediately understood that this was the word that was translated as “In the beginning.” But with my newfound passion and excitement, I invested the word “Beresheet” with much more. Given the vastness of what I had experienced over the previous six weeks, I had to believe that vastness was contained in the first word of the Torah that started it all. At the very least, it struck me that where English began the Torah translation with multiple words, the original Hebrew packed it into one. If the Hebrew could condense all of that meaning—not only the extra words but the beginning of the cosmos—into one word, then “Beresheet” had to mean something infinitely more than the prosaic “In the beginning.” Perhaps the word was ultimately inscrutable, its meaning undone in the attempt to express everything. In a very personal, private way, I had the sense that this one word was calling me on, inviting me to delve deeper into the mysteries of holy teaching, but only through hints and signs. I knew almost no Hebrew, I had no tools to parse the grammar or understand this evocative word in its literary or historical context, but I had an inchoate sense that it was beckoning, showing me everything and hiding everything at the same time.

As an adult, my spiritual life has entailed acquiring and refining the skills to analyze Hebrew text on multiple levels, from the hidden meanings buried in grammatical subtleties to the mystical implications of each letter. And as my learning has deepened, the mystery of spiritual beginnings, contained in the word Beresheet, has become both more revealed and more concealed. The dialectic of gathering the tools to know, but ultimately reaching the place of not knowing, was something I encountered the first time I tried to read a traditional commentary, in Hebrew, on this first word of the Torah. I was twenty-two, in a bookstore in the ultra-Orthodox Meah Sha’arim section of Jerusalem. This was a time of new beginnings, spiritual and otherwise. I was traveling with my fiancée, Judy, and upon returning home from Jerusalem we would move in together. Having been to Israel before, when I was fifteen, I now felt that something real and palpable was taking root within me—a desire to learn, to draw closer. In my last year or so of college, I felt new stirrings about wanting to become a rabbi, and so I had learned some Hebrew, taken some classes, and read a lot of Jewish books. On this short trip, I made a lifelong friend, an Israeli with profound religious roots, who inspired and challenged me and suggested I check out this one particular bookstore.

In the store, I opened a Mikra’ot Gedolot, a traditional commentary covering the entire Hebrew Bible that arranges canonical scholars and traditional text on the same page, as if they are having a dialogue with each other over a millennium. Picking up this book for the first time with the intention of studying it, if only for a moment, I felt as if I were entering this timeless conversation. I’d studied enough Hebrew at this point to understand the first few words of Rashi, the great Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak, who lived in eleventh-century France, whose commentary usually appears on the inside column as a gloss on the words of the Torah. I only needed those first few words to deepen my sense of awe and wonder at the word Beresheet.

The Torah Never Means What It Says

A great teacher of mine quipped that “The Torah never means what it says,” and any lifelong student of the Torah will admit that is true, albeit sometimes in more modified and pious language. The eleventh-century French scholar Rashi is perhaps the most well-known author who shows how this is the case with each line, word, and sometimes letter of the Torah. While the details about Rashi’s life are more bound up in myth than confirmed by evidence, his popular biography says a lot about how Judaism classically views a spiritual life as revering the old while seeking out the new at the same time.

Both of these strains come together in Rashi’s opening words to his commentary on the Torah. Reflecting on the meaning of the word “Beresheet,” Rashi pays tribute to a teacher in writing, “Rabbi Yitzchak says . . . .” One traditional assumption is that this “Rabbi Yitzchak” is Rashi’s father, who according to legend was a humble winemaker. As the name Rashi is actually an acronym for “Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak,” the tradition may be historically accurate. However, the tradition concerning Rabbi Yitchak may be just a long-repeated assumption. The midrash, which predates Rashi by at least 800 years, quotes a rabbinic sage named Rabbi Yitzchak who advances a rather novel idea about the Torah itself. Rashi then draws upon this Rabbi Yitzchak in his own commentary on the beginning of Genesis.

In this first comment, Rashi learns from “Rabbi Yitzchak” that the Torah did not need to begin with the account of creation, but rather the first actual commandment in the Torah in the book of Exodus: God’s instruction to Moses about a new calendar, a new way of sanc...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Beginnings
• Part 2: Shattering the Vessels
• Part 3: Tikkun/Integration
• Epilogue: God as Everything and Nothing
• Bibliography