We are all hearing a great deal right now about ISIS or ISIL, you pick which you want to call it. 2015 has witnessed terror attacks in the name of Islam against those who defame the prophet and/or the religion. We have witnessed and are witnessing intolerance and hatred against the values of the west and of enlightenment. All of this is quite disturbing and scary. All of this is not what we had hoped for when we looked forward at Rosh Hashana or the secular New Years. All of this was what we prayed would not happen. We are witnessing the debate about the Iranian nuclear program and the clear and present existential danger that it poses to Israel. These are not easy times…
Last week we read about the building of the משכן, the traveling tabernacle. This week we begin to read about the work that was done in it in regards to the service of God. I am struck by the physicality of the Temple system and the sacrificial system. I am struck by the great amount of literalism that was normative Judaism at that time. I am struck because what I am about to write might at first glance seem heretical but I ask you to please hear me out.
When we march the Torah around the sanctuary Jews reach out to kiss it. They go out of their way to make sure they don’t miss that sacred opportunity. When Jews enter a building with a Mezuzah on the door some will reach out to kiss that as well. If a Torah scroll is dropped and it hits the ground we fast for 40 days as Moses had to do for the 40 days and nights while receiving the Torah at Sinai. But here is the problem I have with all of this. Are we kissing the physical Torah and ascribing some supernatural power to it? Are we kissing the Mezuzah and ascribing something miraculous to it? Are we fasting because something hit the ground that is physically sacred and holy? A mezuzah case (the pretty container on our doorposts) without a parchment is meaningless. Two wooden rollers with blank parchment attached to them is nothing special at all. Fasting for that would be pointless. This is because we are not kissing the physical or fasting over earthly holy objects. No it is the opposite. It is the words on the parchment that are important. It is the writing on the scroll in the Mezuzah that means something. When the physical is divorced from its meaning it is nothing at all. Just kissing the Torah is nothing but kissing its message is everything. Seeing the physical as the essence and not the message is dangerous to say the least.
What happens when the message is lost and the physical is all that remains? Those physical elements are deified and made to be so sacred that they can be protected at the risk of losing lives. If some group of bad people (trying to think of a good word) gets a Torah scroll and sets it on fire on TV I am not going to become a terrorist. The reason is that through me being a terrorist I would negate the sacred message of our Torah for the sake of the physical scroll it is written on. Pictures of Mohamed are being used as a pretext to claim that the Muslim people have the right and/or duty to kill the infidels. When they begin to elevate the spirit and message over the physical they will begin to see that in their murderous actions they are negating all that has been taught to humankind and all that is part of the message of religion. By their inability to see nuance and their inability to look for the metaphor in the writing they are allowing themselves to commit idolatry and in that idolatry they justify murder. I am scared because we seem to try to bend to their idolatry and we seem to try to explain it. But the reality is that life is not as sacred to them as their concept of sacredness in the physical realm is. Life is the ultimate in sanctity and we must affirm that. May more of the world begin to see that as true.
