Beit Warszawa, Warsaw, Poland – July 2015
There is a wonderful story from the Talmud (Bava Metzia 83a) that tells of how Rabba bar bar Chana’s porters once broke one of his barrels of wine. Rabba took their jackets as payment for the accident. The porters went and told Rav, who said to Rabba: “Give them back their jackets.” Rabba bar bar Channa asked, “Is this the law?” knowing that the laws say they were liable for the damage. Rav answered: “Yes,” and quoted from Proverbs (2:20): “So that you walk in the way of the good.”
Confused, Rabba gave back their jackets, and then the porters said to Rav, “We are poor, we worked all day; we are hungry and we have nothing.” When Rav heard this complaint, Rav told Rabba to pay them their entire salary! Again, Rabba questioned the ruling: “Is this the law? The porters were just doing some part-time work for me, and I paid for the work they did. Why do they need a full salary?” Rav replied: “Yes it is the law,” quoting the second half of the same verse from Proverbs: “And you should walk the path of the righteous.”
Living a Jewish life and walking the path of Halacha, Jewish law, involved many of the same challenges for the rabbis of the Talmud as it does for contemporary Jews. Beyond all of the many details of how to follow the laws in daily life, we are often forced to compare these laws and Jewish traditions with the ever changing values of society, the lessons of our own experiences, and sometimes the simple inner voice telling us to “do what is right”. Surprisingly, while many might see traditional Judaism as a religious system centered around strict laws, the essence of halacha recognizes that law should be a guide, not the final answer to the situations we encounter in life.
We receive some important reminders about the fascinating interplay of Jewish law and the realities of daily life in this week’s Torah portion, V’etchanan. The second parsha of the book of Deuteronomy continues Moses’s retelling of the Israelites’ experience in the desert, and reviews many of the laws that the people should follow when they make it to the Promised Land. The Ten Commandments are given, along with the Shema and V’ahavta. And then in the midst of a detailed retelling of these laws and commandments, we hear something which is surprising in its simplicity: V’asitah ha yashar v’ha tov b’enei Adonai, “Do what is right and good in the eyes of God” (Deut. 6:18).
In the Torah, every word and new idea serves a purpose, so the rabbis saw this commandment as not simply a summary of the other laws, but a commandment that offered its own truth to the text. While we could assume that “being good” is inherently a part of every law that is given in the Torah, this commandment is in fact asking us to take responsibility for how we use these laws in our own lives. We should never think that just going through our days strictly following the law is enough. Instead, we need to make sure that lens through which all the laws are seen is for the greater purpose of being a good person.
This idea, lifnim mishurat hadin, going “above the letter of the law” is an often overlooked aspect of the practice of halachah, and is an important concept for the understanding of the evolution of Jewish life and practice. Judaism has always been a pathway for making sense of the world, and Jewish law has the potential to be so compelling necessarily because it involves a constant source of guidance through all of the unique experiences and interactions we have in our daily lives. According to the rabbis, this continual exploration of the law as it turns up in our life experiences allows us to fully appreciate the spirit of the commandments and also to show our love for God and the Torah. We have to look to the law, but also look beyond it to really make it useful.
In his introduction to Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, Maimonides writes how halachah is not simply a system of rules which are meant to divide one’s life into moments of right and wrong, or to create a system of ethics devoid of personal choice in how one interacts with the world. Instead he says that it is Jewish law actually leads us towards moderation and avoiding extremes, and towards a “healthy moral character.” In essence, if we walk through the world examining every interaction through the lens of halacha, it becomes habit to do what is “right and good.” Halachah literally means “the path,” and to follow this often winding trail means that we are meant to encounter these laws in the unexpected moments in our journeys, not only at the Shabbat table or the synagogue, but throughout our lives.
The idea of “being good” as the ultimate truth of the Torah is especially relevant during this week after Tisha B’Av, when we commemorate the destruction of the first and second Temples and the many other tragic events in our history. While there is not much focus in our prayers for about the reason the Temples were destroyed, the rabbis of the Talmud suggested that “Jerusalem was destroyed because they acted in accordance with the letter of the law and did not go beyond it” (Bava Metzia 30b). Interestingly, it was the same rabbis who said this, who were influenced by this national trauma to create the Mishnah and the Talmud, the core books of Jewish law and “letters” in the Jewish tradition! Yet, even so, halachah was never meant to be confined to the books of law, and the rabbis knew this. This is why the Talmud is full of both endless arguments and disagreements about the intricacies of the laws, but also it is full of aggadah, stories of how the rabbis encountered these laws in their lives. They knew that law only works if it is explored and revealed through life.
We do not need to live an Orthodox life to be on the path of halachah, and in fact the essence of liberal Judaism is that it allows us to be informed and inspired by Jewish tradition but not give up on the values and beliefs that we have gained from living in the contemporary world. In my own Jewish journey I have learned to reclaim traditional terms such as “halachah” and “tradition” and see my own Jewish practice and understanding of Jewish life as not only authentic, but also deeply rooted in the history we share with all Jews. We may have added some interpretation to the liturgy we sing during our services, and we may choose to be shomer shabbat, to “keep Shabbat” differently than our ancestors. Yet, if these choices are informed by and connected with tradition, then they too are part of the continual evolution of Jewish life, and are as legitimate as any other choice.
Wherever you are on your Jewish journey, I hope that you can see yourself as part of this mesorah, this heritage, and that your Jewish identity is both validated and supported by the teachings of our tradition. Of course Judaism provides us with a system of ethics and laws, but we can’t forget the words of our sages to also “read in between the lines” as we work to find a way to make what we learn part of of everyday experiences. Zai a Mentch, “Be a person,” as we say in Yiddish, reminds us of one of the primary lessons of the Torah: that the striving to be good is at its core simply the process of becoming more human. For me, this is the greatest joy of being Jewish. And working towards this goal is how we take the wealth of learning and values in the Jewish tradition and not leave it to dwell in the past, but work to bring it into our vision of the world in which we live, and to truly make it our own. As Rav reminds us so simply in the story from the Talmud: “Walk in the ways of the good, and keep the paths of the righteous.”
So may we on this Shabbat Nahamu, this Shabbat of comfort, be blessed with the ability to be inspired by the laws and the rituals of our tradition, and find a way to make them a part of each of our stories, to do right and good for ourselves, and for each other.