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Parashat Noach - October 24th 2009 (Rabbi Neil Janes)
Posted by Rabbi Neil Janes on 11/24/09
Shabbat Shalom. I’m delighted to welcome the family and friends of Azra this morning. All the way from Seattle and Toronto, we’re delighted you are able to celebrate with our community this morning. Azra you have made everyone very proud and it has been a pleasure having you share the bimah with me.
Azra, the portion you read this morning for us is one of the most fascinating stories of origins that occur in the book of Genesis. If you imagine that a large part of the book is an attempt by the ancient authors to establish an understanding of where we come from and why things are as they are. If you imagine that, then you will come closer to understanding what is the purpose of the various narratives. Moreover, as Nahum Sarna, the great Biblical scholar points out, Babel accounts for the dispersal of people and the repopulation of the world after the flood. And, perhaps more importantly, the beginning of the shift from the universal experience of humanity to the very particular experience of one family – through Abraham.
Azra, you have skilfully identified the problem with the story. Why is such a big deal made out of what the people are doing? Even the sages of old remark that the deeds of the generation of the flood are explained in the Torah, but those of the ‘dispersal’ (Babel) are not. They are a mystery. And so goes on the midrash, the rabbinic commentaries, with attempts to understand what was so wrong with the building of the Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel is a wonderful ancient folk tale. It reminds me of times spent at the beach building sandcastles. There’s always one parent, usually a father, who spends more time than his son or daughter perfecting the to-scale model of Windsor in the sand. His children are merrily digging holes, whilst he is obsessed with whether the arches are right or how to get the moat to fill with water without destroying his work of art. In fact, if you google image search sandcastles, you’ll see structures that are probably larger than my house. How many of us used to play with lego or toy bricks and spend hours building the tallest tower?
There is an enormous synagogue in Budapest known as the Dohany, because it is located on Dohany street (apologies for the pronunciation). This Synagogue brings to life the psyche of the Jewish community. Built in the mid-19th Century it records the emancipated Jewish community feeling at ease in their diaspora city, so comfortable that they are willing to build a synagogue that is umissable. Outdoing all other buildings in the locale. The synagogue proclaims – we are here, we are proud to be here and we are laying our foundations in this city.
According to legend, when the Dohany Street Synagogue was built, using the most advanced architectural techniques, the building committee were afraid. They looked at the designs for the pillars holding the huge building up and could not believe they could support the weight. The innovation was, of course, the use of cast iron. In fact, the building was so big it had an organ to match – one that Franz Liszt even played upon. But when first opened the organ was so large it blew the music off the choir’s music stands, such was the force from the pipes.
None of us, you see, is immune from constructing buildings of grandeur, so perhaps that wasn’t exactly the problem with our story today.
Azra, the story of the Tower of Babel is one that holds a strange attraction to us as modern readers. There is, of course, a certain degree of polemic against idolatry and paganism. Babylonia was an amazing civilisation, with the Zigurat (the tower probably described in the story, which means ‘rise up high’ in Akkadian) a central part of that civilisation. These Ziggurats were considered to be a meeting point for people and their gods. The need for high places was particularly felt in the flood plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates. So the biblical story undermines this view – God still has to come down no matter how high they build the meeting happens wherever God chooses. And more than that, the pagan world of Mesopotamia – Babilim, gate of the gods – is nicknamed Bavel, confounded speech. Each person becomes as comprehensible as the babbling of babies and brooks in Bavel, ba, ba, ba, ba.
The text subtly challenges ideas of its time from surrounding Near Eastern cultures. Of course, Babylon is the source of some phenomenal insights and intellectual advancements and some of the greatest products of Jewish culture were written there – some of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. At different times of course. When conflict finally subsides in Iraq perhaps we will find more archaeological treasures for the world to study about the ancient Babylonian world.
But for me, there is another side to this story of the Tower of Babel. It is the antithesis to the creation story, about which I talked last week. It is a challenge, a question directed towards human beings’ own creative abilities.
Azra, you are completely correct to focus upon what might happen if there were unlimited power for creativity. You mention the inflated ego of succeeding in the enormous building project – at least here in the UK we can’t be guilty of that (the Olympics may yet prove me wrong)! Or Azra you then ask what would the world be like if we could do everything and anything? There’s clearly a sinister side to the human power of creativity – Nobel, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel prize, knew it and Einstein knew it, scientific advance can be used for utterly destructive purposes or hugely beneficial purposes.
Here, in our text, is a people who spend all the time investing in a structure to create a name for themselves. Some name. We hear little of their wider civilisation, at least in the Torah itself. Their sole accomplishment appears to be their ability to unite in this project to build up their name and avoid a dispersal. They have, to hand, the most advanced technology in their bricks and mortar. Recall our synagogue in Budapest, building projects of enormity always require advances in knowledge for their completion and impressiveness.
They build alright, but at what cost? We’re told in a rabbinic interpretation of the text that “If a worker fell and died, no one paid any attention. But if a brick would fall they would sit and mourn saying, ‘where can we ever find one to take its place!’”
What unifies the people is not the sense of humanity, not the universal, the regard for the sanctity of human life and it all being created in the image of God. No, what unites the people is a building, a structure of bricks and mortar. This is not universalism as we proclaim it today. This is striving for god-like power to create and build. What was important was the brick, not the life that formed it.
Such a great rejection of the significance of our humanity. To unite in care solely for a brick is to forgo our care for life itself and the resourceful, imaginative, ingenious, inspiration that accompanies it. That is why the dispersion and proliferation of language is the punishment. We must begin again to understand the universal sense of being human – we are all the same – yet, our unity is discovered through diversity. Our world can be made whole, but whole through uniqueness, distinctiveness, through the harmony of difference.
In making new things we come as close as we can to being god-like, that after all is the wonder of bringing a new life into the world. Yet creation for its own sake, the tower of Babel, is a complete rejection of humanity.
So, Azra, we have a series of questions addressed to us from your Torah portion: How should we use our creative abilities? What do we build together – in spite of differences and language barriers? How should our differences bring us together in celebration of humanity?
This is the lasting issue and insight beyond the subtleties of the brief nine verses. Azra, what do we create as human beings, different in so many ways, what do we do to ennoble our existence? How do we make the world whole through our differences? How can we allow our diversity to be a part of the repair of our fragile planet?
We can start by not being threatened by difference. By learning about other cultures, peoples and languages. By recognising that our origins are not so distinct and that identity is really something less solid and firm than at first we might imagine. In our hands is great power and opportunity, we can be reflections of the Divine rather than strive to be gods.
Azra, as you reach this marvellous moment in your life when you mark your official transition from childhood into the journey towards adulthood, perhaps you will take the lessons of your Torah portion with you. Your mind and your hands possess enormous creative potential. I know already that you are someone who loves the creativity of writing. That creativity, the human imagination for turning nothing into something, is as close as we get to being God and therefore we should cherish it and respect it. My hope for you is that you will always be creative, you will always turn your hand to thinking up new things, new stories, new ideas. Never just to make a name for yourself, for power, and always with a wonder for the novel – perhaps in both senses of the word. You are clearly someone who is very thoughtful and fortunate to be surrounded by a gentle, caring and inspiring family. May they accompany you on this journey to adulthood and beyond – being there to be part of the celebration of your achievements and there to support you at other times. May you accomplish much in your life and may you always make your parents, grandparents, family and friends as proud of you as you have done today. May this be God’s will and let us say: Amen.
Shabbat Bereshit - 17 October 2009 (Rabbi Neil Janes)
Posted by Rabbi Neil Janes on 11/22/09
So we’re reading about creation – after Rabbi Danny Rich’s sermon on Yom Kippur afternoon concerning Richard Dawkins it feels like a pretty good challenge for us to grapple with this morning. We have to up our game as followers of Liberal religion and Dawkins apparently is the push that we need.
I’ve said before that it is almost always the Bar Mitzvah students, generally the boys, who arrive in my office and say to me, “I’m not religious, well not like you anyway.” I then ask them what they mean by that and the answer, frequently, follows something along the lines of, “well I don’t believe in creation, I believe in evolution.” Behind the statement is an implicit assumption that to be religious is to deny the place of science – even though, as my teacher the illui (child prodigy) Rabbi Louis Jacobs ztz’l points out there were those Modern Orthodox rabbis who regarded evolution as a reflection of God’s hand in creation. It’s just (a) the fundamentalists whose voices have been overpowering in all the Abrahamic religions and (b) the poverty of our own response in clarity and volume. These factors have led our young people to believe that even to be a Liberal religious Jew you have to ignore science and read the creation story literally.
I once had a friend who was teaching at an Orthodox Jewish day school, a smaller less well known one. He was a Liberal Jew (though he had to pretend he wasn’t Jewish or be Orthodox in the school). A colleague, who wasn’t Jewish, was teaching Geography and in the course of a lesson was describing the origins of the earth, geological formations – the billions of years old history. As he said that the class burst into fits of giggles and he couldn’t understand it. My friend explained in the staff room that although the students had to learn the national curriculum to get their exam passes, it was only, if you pardon the term, ‘academic’. They knew they had to say the world was billions of years old, where in reality they knew it was only approaching 6000 years.
The fundamentalists read the text literally. The world, somehow or other, was formed 5770 years ago. It was created in 7 days and depending on your view point it may or may not have been created out of nothing – ex nihilo. Geology and fossils are only there to confuse us, planted there by God, or misunderstood with our current scientific advancements. Just don’t ask who Abel married…
Let us, instead of reading the text literally – as our fundamentalist friends might wish we did – read it as an incredible paean to the splendour of the world we see about us and the responsibility of every human being to be present and part of that world. A responsibility to contribute to the splendour and not diminish it. And, dare I say it from the pulpit!, the search for the presence of God within the awesome wonder of this tiny planet.
Rabbi Arthur Green writes: “The fact is that we Jews have largely abandoned Creation as a theological issue. Convinced as we are that the origin of the species – and of the universe itself – is something to be explained by scientists rather than theologians, most of us have seen no value in attempting a defense of ancient Jewish views on Creation…We have left Genesis 1 in the hands of the so-called Creationists among fundamentalist Christians, circles from which we are quite alienated, both socially and theologically.”
Then what do we do with a doctrine that we don’t accept forming The Beginning of our sacred text?
Perhaps we hold a non-supernaturalist view of God and creation. We take the text to be purely a myth that evolved with our ancestors and for us today God is really a word for the power of nature – the force that formed the universe out of the Big Bang. Perhaps we are still supernaturalists and regard the story as a reflection of a desire to see the power of the Divine in the formation of the world – we don’t see a watchmaker, but we do see the presence of the One who spoke and formed the world out of chaos. Maybe, as the Lurianic Kabbalah suggests, God withdrew the Divine presence in order to make space for the world – Tzimtzum. In this retraction comes imperfection, but without it the world could not have come into being. You see, there are many, many ways of reading the words Bereshit bara Elohim without taking it literally or abusing the text by arguing that 7 days represents long periods of time and that if you look closely evolution follows a similar pattern to that of the story. We don’t need to take it literally to see great ideas as Liberal Jews. We don’t have to flog the text in order for its beauty and its poetry, for the radical amazement to be called forth.
Every day after the Barechu we recite the words, “in Your goodness You renew creation continually day by day.” Every day, every moment, every rising of the sun and starry night is an act of creation. It is a recognition that we live as part of the world, our recreation each day is a part of that. The seven days leading to Shabbat, again in the words of Rabbi Green, ‘bear witness to God’s world, whole and created anew. On Friday evening, I testify that I am present to the ongoing work and rest of YHWH as Creator. This act is an important, even vital one to me. It affirms more than Judaism for me; it affirms my essential humanity, my sense of belonging in this God-filled world, my creation and constant re-creation in God’s image.”
Each passing week is an echo of an idea, 7 days is arbitrary for that exact reason – not bound by anything in the natural world. The echo of our common connection as part of this world, not superior or alien. We are part of creation and each day we and everything in it is part of the creation anew. Every Shabbat is a taste of Divine rest, a ripple from the beginning and a taste of the world to come. Shabbat therefore is a monument to creation and an aspiration of perfection.
We, created in the Divine image (yet another incredible insight by the text), are told in a homily that we should remember that on the one hand we were created last – a pinnacle of creation perhaps. Yet on the other hand, lest we get above ourselves, we were created last – even the gnat was made before human beings.
The world is created and human beings are created as part of it. We are not a separate and other worldly form existing on this planet until it expires and we find a new one. We are made up of the same matter, the same chemicals, the same mortal essence as everything else. The text may make us think we have dominion, but really we are only in partnership. In an iconoclastic rant, Anthony Hopkins character in the film ‘Instinct’ says, “We have only one thing to give up. Our dominion. We don't own the world. We're not kings yet. Not gods. Can we give that up? Too precious, all that control? Too tempting, being a god?”
Yet now the creation story amongst Liberal Jews is not read as a call to power and control for human kind. It is a call to environmental awareness, it is a reminder that we need a new kind of ecological understanding that is entwined in our theology. If we do not we shall only have memories of the splendour and shall read the paeans to our descendents as if they were once true. We know we do not have dominion as imagined by previous generations, but we do have stewardship – and at that we also probably wouldn’t get the job if there were other applicants. But there are no other applicants, we are it.
The creation story is full of some of the most amazing insights and unique ideas. We could be lost amidst Darwin and the Big Bang. Let us leave the science to fulfil its role – in fact, I would go further. Let science speak to us with its truths and let us always fight for its place in our synagogues and our schools. Do not let the fundamentalists have control or be the loudest voice. However, on this Shabbat when we read our Torah, let us allow the power of a ancient wisdom of ideas and wonderment to speak to us.
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