Reb Barry's Dvar Torah

Shavuot 5766
The Power of Being Commanded
By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff

Shavuot is called zeman matan Torateinu, the time of the giving of our Torah. That’s what we called it earlier this morning in our Amidah prayer.

Why don’t we call it zeman kibalnu Torateinu, the time when we accepted the Torah?

Years ago, some of the shtetls in Eastern Europe were too small and too poor to afford a full time rabbi. So there were itinerant rabbis, preachers, and teachers who would travel from town to town, sharing words of Torah, bringing the light of God’s word to the outback and beyond.

Nowadays, Torah is everywhere. Even here in Toledo, a town with fewer than 4,000 Jews, we have six rabbis. Chabad has been producing so many rabbis it seems like any town which has enough Jews to have a minyan has a Chabad. The University of Judaism has doubled the number of Conservative rabbis being ordained in America every year. Some of my colleagues are worried about what we’re going to do with this glut of rabbis on the market. Incredible words of Torah – written, audio and even video – are available anywhere there is an internet connection 24 hours a day. Torah is “given” everywhere.

But is anyone listening?

Shavuot is called zeman matan Torateinu, the time of the giving of the Torah, because our tradition says God gave the Torah to Moses at a particular time and place. Tradition says 3,318 years ago yesterday Moses went up to Mt. Sinai and came back down with the Ten Commandments. But the receiving of the Torah – that’s an event that is personal and individual. We accept the Torah anew every day.

When we Jews say “accept the Torah,” we mean accept being bound by the commandments of the Torah. And that’s the subject I want to explore this morning. Why should we, people living over three thousand years later, accept the commandments?

Many different reasons have been given for why we should obey the commandments. Some people obey out of a fear of Divine punishment—you want to stay out of Hell, you obey the rules. Some people obey because it’s what defines us as Jewish, as part of this covenant between Man and God. Some people obey because our ancestors made a promise to God and we are continuing to fulfill that promise. Some people obey out of a sense of “owing” God, for all the good things God has done for us. In fact this morning’s Torah reading gives this as a reason for obeying. Deuteronomy 16:12 says “And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall observe and do these statutes.” God reminds us He brought us out of Egypt, so we owe Him, and we should observe the commandments.

Other people obey because it flows out of their faith in God. They believe in God, so they obey His commandments.

This, in fact, is the attitude of most non-Catholic Christians. One of the differences between Protestants and Catholics is that Protestants believe that obedience has nothing to do with getting into Heaven—that comes exclusively through faith, whereas Catholics believe obedience still has a role to play in salvation. For Protestants obedience simply follows from faith.

The famous 19th century British preacher C. H. Spurgeon said “We preach the obedience of faith. Faith is the fountain, the foundation, and the fosterer of obedience. Men obey not God till they believe him. We preach faith in order that men may be brought to obedience. To disbelieve is to disobey.”

In a more contemporary vein, Pastor Paul Mizzi says “Faith is the unseen root; obedience is the seen fruit.”

Our Muslim brothers and sisters would appear to agree with this approach; after all, Islam means “submission to God.” Abul A’la Mawdudi wrote “And it is a matter of common sense that this obedience cannot ensure in full measure unless man knows certain basic facts of life and reposes firm faith in them….First of all, one should have unshakable belief in the existence of God, for unless a man has a firm and unalloyed faith in God’s existence, how can he render obedience to Him?”

The message from both Islam and Protestant Christians is “Faith first. From faith will flow obedience”

A lot of Jews would seem to have a similar attitude. And this explains why they don’t obey the commandments. They are waiting to have faith. They may be telling themselves when I have real faith, then I’ll obey the rules. Some years ago a friend of mine told me he’d start keeping kosher when God came and told him he wanted him to keep kosher. In the meanwhile, he would keep eating the shrimp cocktails.

My friend didn’t consider the message in the Bible to eat only fish with fins and scales sufficiently personal or sufficiently compelling. But his attitude is pretty typical – in essence, it says “convince me of the wisdom of what you want me to do, and then I’ll do it.”

That is the normal way we learn things. When I’m teaching someone a new maneuver in flying, the first thing I do is explain what the maneuver is, I explain why we do it, and I explain how we do it. I ask the student if he or she has any questions. Then in the air I demonstrate the maneuver, and then have the student perform the maneuver. Afterwards I ask the student to critique it himself before I share my advice on how to improve. So for example, there is a maneuver all student pilots do called “flying a rectangular pattern.” I explain to the student that we do this maneuver so that he will learn how to compensate for the effect of the wind when you want to follow a particular ground track, which is an important skill in getting an airplane where you want to go and getting it lined up with the runway when you want to land. I then explain how we select what we call a “crab angle” to compensate for the effect of the wind. When the student shows he understands what it’s about we try it. The doing comes after the explaining, and an important part of the understanding and the motivating is an appreciation for why a particular maneuver is part of the process of learning to fly.

This is nothing new. In Madregat HaAdam, a work of Mussar, R. Joseph Horowitz explains that in the normal course of events, when someone makes a request of them, they first consider the request and decide whether or not they want to do it, and they are cautious, lest the request be something that will cause them harm, or it will be something impossible for them to live with.

All of which makes our ancestors reply when Moses came down the mountain with the Torah somewhat perplexing. They said

כּל אֲשֶׁר-דִּבֶּר יְי נַעֲשֶה וְנִשְׁמָע:

Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hear/understand.

The EXACT opposite of the normal process: they agreed to follow the commandments without even understanding what it was that they were being commanded to do.

The Talmud expresses shock that our ancestors agreed to obey first: “R. Eleazar said: When the Israelites gave precedence to we will do over we will hearken, a Heavenly Voice went forth and exclaimed to them, Who revealed to My children this secret, which is employed by the Ministering Angels, as it is written, Bless the Lord, ye angels of his. Ye mighty in strength, that fulfill his word, That hearken unto the voice of his word: first they fulfill and then they hearken?”

What’s so powerful about this secret?

To appreciate the power of this secret, we have to first understand what’s the purpose of the religious life. Why be religious at all?

The goal of most religions is to achieve a state of being connected to God. All religions claim to be a path, if not THE path, to connecting with God. The believer knows that having a real relationship with God can transform your life like nothing else.

The Slonimer Rebbe says the goal of every Jew should be to achieve devekut, a cleaving to God, a powerful connection with God. Na’aseh v’nishmah—agreeing to obey before hearing the rules—demonstrates this, because the essence of na’aseh v’nishmah is that even in dark times, when we don’t understand the will of God very clearly, when our understanding is limited, we still put na’aseh, we will do, before nishmah, we will understand. We still cleave to God, we still accept God, even if we don’t totally understand God.

An insistence on having it all explained in an understandable way before taking on a particular mitzvah is symptomatic of a distant relationship with God.

If someone you love says “do me a favor?” what’s the answer?

“Of course, what is it?”

We don’t need it explained first. We agree first because we trust and love the other person. We want to do things for them. The Slonimer Rebbe says that at Sinai our ancestors accepted the commandments from a place of love, the way children love their parents.

So if we say na’aseh, we will do, what do we need the nishmah for? Madregat HaAdam says that by saying na’aseh, we are agreeing to perform God’s will even before we understand it. The nishmah we pursue is to understand what it is that God is asking of us—not so that we can decide whether or not to do it, we’ve already agreed we’ll do it—but rather simply so that we’ll know what to do.

Too many modern Jews get caught up in making decisions about each individual mitzvah. Should I keep kosher or not? Should I keep kosher at home but eat whatever out? Should I keep the Sabbath? How should I keep the Sabbath?

And what about those rules that seem pretty obscure. Like shaatnez, the prohibition of mixing wool and linen. What does God have against wool and linen? Do I really have to follow that one?

Yes, you really have to follow that one.

I may go down in history as the only Conservative rabbi to ever tell his congregants they have to pay attention to shaatnez – usually we’re so focused on the big two of getting people to keep kosher and observe the Sabbath we don’t speak much of other ritual commandments.

But shaatnez has important symbolic value—particularly because it seems so random and inexplicable.

When I look at a label to make sure it does not contain a mixture of wool and linen, I am reminded that I accept the idea of being commanded by God to obey the mitzvot. I am reminded that I accept the idea of God being greater than me. I am reminded that I accept being bound to obey the rules God gave us in the Torah. I have a brief moment of increasing my daily “God-consciousness,” all from following a seemingly random rule of the Torah.

We accept these rules as a package because we believe God loves us and the rules God gives us are for our own benefit. When my doctor gives me a prescription for a particular medication, I don’t have to run to the internet to decide whether or not I’m going to take it– I trust my doctor to have given me something for my benefit.

But even here, there is nothing wrong with asking a nishmah question, a question seeking further understanding. After I get my prescription I may look on the internet for advice about a particular medication, or more details on things to watch out for. Not because I’m questioning the instruction, but rather for clarification. Similarly we accept God’s commandments, but can still look for clarification after we’ve accepted them.

The nishmah – the seeking understanding – can become complicated when we see things in the Torah that seem to contradict themselves. That’s why the rabbis have struggled so much with the Torah over the centuries. In today’s Torah reading we read about the remission of debts in the seventh year. Which sounds like a wonderful innovation for poor people – give them a chance to get out from under their debt load every seven years. Of course, there is one obvious problem: who’s going to lend money to someone in the sixth year? God recognized this, and the in this morning’s reading we were cautioned “Beware that there be not a thought in your wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing; and he cry to the Lord against you, and it be sin to you.”

Unfortunately, people did refuse to lend money to poor people as the year of release approached. So the great rabbi Hillel established the prozbul two thousand years ago. The prozbul was a mechanism whereby a beit din, a rabbinic court, would take custody of a loan so that it would not be released in the seventh year. He instituted this so that people would continue to lend to poor people even when the seventh year was approaching.

The Torah explicitly commanded something: the debts are to be forgiven in the seventh year. But the rabbi saw that this explicit commandment was preventing a more important principle of the Torah from being fulfilled, the principle of taking care of the poor – so he changed the rule. He used nishmah to try and really understand what the Torah commands us—what God wants us to do.

Accepting being commanded means our default response to God’s rules must be to obey. There is no good reason not to follow the commandment against shaatnez, so I follow it. It’s not such a huge inconvenience. If there is a commandment that seems problematic, or seems to contradict other principles in the Torah, like the remission of debts resulting in making it worse for poor people, the tradition tells us it is OK to wrestle with those commandments. We have been interpreting those commandments for millennia, because we believe that when we engage in that interpretation we are seeking God’s will. We’ve already agreed we’ll do God’s will, we’re just trying to figure out what it really is when we spot a contradiction.

Following the commandments is the way that Jews bring God into their lives. Whether it’s by making time for God on the Sabbath and holidays, or by remembering to thank God with a blessing for the good food She has given us, or by reading the label on a sports coat to see if it contains shaatnez, the commandments are ways to bring God into our lives.

And a relationship with God is like a relationship with a person. You have a deeper relationship with someone in your immediate family that you talk to several times a day than you have with someone you talk to three times a year. The more time you spend with God, the deeper your relationship will be.

And THAT’S the power of the secret of our ancestor’s putting na’aseh before nishmah. Faith does not lead to obedience – the world is full of people who claim to believe in God who don’t follow His rules. It’s the other way around. Obedience leads to faith. We follow the rules not as a reflection of our close relationship with God, but as a reflection of our DESIRE to have a close relationship with God.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said that Judaism does not call on people to take a leap of faith – it calls on people to take a leap of action. Bring your doubts, bring your questions, but follow the mitzvot – and along the way you may find your doubts disappearing and your questions being answered.

Today is Shavuot, the day we celebrate zeman matan Torahteinu, the time of the giving of our Torah. Will today also be the day for our accepting the Torah?

In everything we do we ask for God’s help – and obeying the commandments is no exception. Earlier this morning we asked God to help bring us to obey His commandments. It’s the prayer before the Shema, and today, Shavuot, it bears repeating:

Avinu, Our Father, merciful Father, compassionate One; have mercy on us and give our hearts understanding and wisdom, lishmoa, lilmod u’l’lamade, to heed, to learn and to teach, lishmor v’la’asot ulkayam, to keep and to do and to establish all the words of Your Torah b’ahava, with love,

Amen.