Behukotai (Archives)

Blessing and Rebuke: “If you walk contrary to Me”

The central theme of this week’s, concluding portion of the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is the promise and admonition, the blessing and curse, promised or threatened to the Jewish people, depending upon whether or not they follow the Torah. This section is closely paralleled by a similar admonition near the end of Deuteronomy (Deut 28); both chapters serve to conclude and reinforce the lengthy codex of laws that precedes it. The principle is simple: each major unit of law presented in the Torah is concluded, “sealed” by a covenant, in which the rewards and sanctions involved are spelled out. (Even the brief code of civil laws that immediately follows the Sinai revelation, in Exodus 21-23:19, is followed by words of admonition in 23:20-33 and a ceremony of covenant making in Ch. 24). Nahmanides makes this parallelism a central element in his schematic division of the Five Books; he sees the laws of the Torah centered around two “covenants”: the covenant made in the desert, in the initial stages of the Israelites wandering in the desert, which he calls “The Covenant of the Tent of Meeting”; and the covenant made at the end of the forty years, the “Covenant of the Steppes of Moab.” Both chapters succinctly describe the multitude of blessings awaiting the people if they follow God’s laws and, at much greater length and in terrifying detail, what will happen if they disobey them.

On the literary level, there is an ironic contrast between the stark eloquence and vividness of the images used here, and the horror of the scenes portrayed. Beyond the overall structural and thematic similarity, there are also many parallels between these two chapters: the picture of the sky above and the earth beneath becoming like bronze and iron (Lev 26:19; Deut 28:23); the mental confusion and terror of the people, leading to irrational fears and total disorientation (“you will flee at the sound of a driven leaf”– Lev 26:36: “you will stumble at noon like a blind man gropes in the darkness”; “you will say in the morning, ‘when will it be evening,’ and in the evening, ‘when it will it be morning’” (Deut 28:28-29, 66-67) ; the resort to cannibalism and devouring their own children by “the most delicate and sensitive among you” (Lev 26:29; Deut 28:53-57). Finally, after drought, warfare, and famine, the people will be sent into exile in a strange, faraway land—where they will ultimately confess their sins and repent.

Ramban sees these two parallel chapters as corresponding to the two great exiles of the Jewish people: the seventy year exile in Babylonia, and the exile beginning with the Roman-Jewish war, known midrashically as “the Edomite exile,” which continued for two thousand years, in Christian Europe and the Moslem Levant. Maimonides mentions that these two portions were originally read on the Sabbaths immediately preceding Shavuot and Rosh Hashana (today they are read two weeks before): both solemn festivals of spiritual intensity and renewal, for which these readings presumably provided some preparatory material for thought and reflection. On another level, Jewish folk custom viewed the very act of reading this chapter with fear and trepidation, so much so that simple people were afraid to be called up to this Torah reading, fearing that they would be personally stricken by all the terrible things described therein. The custom thus developed for the shamash (warden or beadle of the synagogue) to be called to this reading; but in other places, the rabbi himself took this aliyah, to counteract this superstition (such was the custom, for example, of Hakham Moses Gaster of England).

But notwithstanding the parallels, there are also significant differences between these two chapters. The tokheha (admonition) in Leviticus is shorter and less verbose than that in Deuteronomy, and thus starker and more striking. The opening verse speaks, not only of non-performance of the mitzvot, but of “spurning” and “abhorring” or “being disgusted by” the commandments.” As a consequence, it says that God will be “disgusted” with you. More strikingly, this chapter describes the punishments coming in a series of ascending stages of severity: “If you do not listen to me… but go on walking contrary to me (or: “walking with me by chance / as if by accident / hapstance”)… I will smite you sevenfold more for your sins” (v. 18, 21, 23-24, 27-28, with variations). Finally, a central motif here is that, as a result of the exile, the land will finally get to enjoy its sabbaths—that is, the sabbatical years, just described in the previous chapter—which it did not receive as its due so long as you dwelt upon it (vv. 34-35). (It is interesting that the idea of the sanctity of the land, connected with moral violations, returns several times in these few chapters: as sanction for sexual licentiousness in Lev 18 & 20; with regard to the sabbatical year in Lev 25; and here.)

Theodicy

But beyond the literary patterns and imagery, this chapter presents a basic, vexing theological problem. The picture described here, in which the good enjoy rest and tranquility and bounty on their own land, and the wicked suffer disasters and exile, does not correspond to everyday life experience. Sometimes, terrible things happen to those who observe the commandments and live decent lives. The Jewish people have confronted this in full force during the twentieth century with the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Everyone knows of pious Jews who, after undergoing incomprehensible horrors, lost their faith in the God of Israel. “Holocaust Theology” has emerged as a whole sub-branch of Jewish thought. But in truth, this problem has always existed. The Shoah may differ quantitatively and qualitatively from other examples of murder of innocent people; it probably represents new dimensions in man’s inhumanity to man, due to the strange mixture of cruelty and methodical “rationality,” and the coldness and lack of passion with which the decision to “exterminate” an entire group of people was executed—but, in the most essential terms, it did not teach anything about the problematics of God’s conduct of the world not already known to the author of the Book of Job or to Rabbi Yohanan, who buried ten sons one after the other.

The Talmud, near the beginning of Berakhot, already takes on this problem. It counsels a person, when confronted with seemingly unwarranted sufferings, to “search out his deeds” and repent. “If he searched and did not find—then he may attribute it to bittul Torah, to insufficient devotion to Torah study”—a duty perpetually incumbent upon every Jew, at all times. But if he may honestly say that he is innocent even of that sin, then he should know that these are yesurim shel ahavah—“sufferings” or “chastisements of love.” Elsewhere, of course, we read of Olam Haba, Gan Eden and Gehinnom—reward and punishment meted out after death according to a person’s deeds in this life. But this solution is unconvincing and unsatisfying to many, for other reasons. In brief, despite the efforts of the best minds of each generation, this remains a perplexing, insoluble problem.

Two Paths of Religious Service

But one may also look at the problem, not through the prism of theodicy, but from a totally different perspective: that of its implications for the spiritual and psychological issues involved in the service of God. Traditional Jewish ethical and spiritual literature (Mussar) speak of the love and fear of God as the two basic attitudes towards the religious life. (To avoid confusion, one should note that we speak of “fear” here as simple fear of punishment, whether in this life or the next, and not of yirat haromemmut, “awe of God’s transcendence”). This chapter, and others of its ilk (including the second paragraph of Shema—Deut 11:13-21—recited twice daily) appeal to the individual to serve God and perform his mitzvot out of “intelligent self-interest”: that is, so as to enjoy the good life, and avoid punishment.

And yet, we know that in innumerable places in Hazal this path is seen as an inferior one. The preferred path is that of service of God out of love, for its own sake, as a supreme value in its own right: “Do not be like servants who serve the master to get a reward, but be like those servants who serve the master not for the sake of a reward.” Elsewhere, the Rabbis feel the need to seek justification for the person who studies Torah “not-for-its-own-sake,” concluding that, even if a person has some ulterior motif, it is still preferable that he serve God “not-for-its-own-sake, for through that he will come to do it for-its-own-sake,” and “the light in it will turn him to the good.” Maimonides, in the crowning chapter of his Laws of Repentance, extols the path of those who “serve God out of love”; those who do so “in order to receive blessings or to merit the life of the Next World” are seen as following an inferior path, suitable only for “children, women, and the ignorant.”

Having said all that, one should mention an additional factor: that the present wave of return to Judaism—adults, both young and in mid-life, who are doing so out of personal choice and decision—does not seem to be motivated by arguments about blessings and rain and abundant produce, nor by hopes of the Afterlife, but by a genuine spiritual quest, what Maimonides describes as “recognizing the good because it is good.” Is this not a whole generation of “ovdei me-ahavah”?

The question I have posed to myself, then, is: if the path of ahavah is so positive and desirable, what is the point of “service through fear”? What, if anything, does this chapter have to say to the sophisticated, spiritually aware, modern religious personality?

Two answers come to mind: consistency & solidity. If we are honest, it is difficult to image any figures, apart perhaps from Abraham and Moses, who were consistently on the level of pure, altruistic, disinterested one. A man is close to himself. He has higher and lower moments; times of greater and lesser spiritual clarity and insight: mohin degadlut and mohin de-katnut. For the lower moments, the stretches of spiritual aridity in a person’s life (which may last for hours, days, or at times even months or years at a time), one needs the service through “fear,” to encourage one to plod through at least the minimum mitzvot. (Unless one wants to take the “all or nothing,” idealistic position, of those intense young people who may say that, “if it’s not lishmah it’s not worth anything).

Educationally, too, this approach has certain advantages. When raising children, one cannot, at the beginning, expect action motivated by pure love and altruism. Motivation may be based on his seeking the parent’s love—but also fear of the parents’ ire. To those modern, progressive parents who eschew the use of fear and punishment, I would only comment that fear need not be of slaps, but can also be of coldness, of parental withdrawal and displeasure. A pun on the verse Ki beapam hargu ish (Gen 49:6: “in their anger they killed men”), reads “you can also kill (or at least devastate) another person by turning your nose up at them.”

Third, about the neophytes who are serving “out of love”; there is need for a certain honesty and penetrating heart-searching. It is at least possible for there to be a certain admixture of refined pleasure seeking in religious return, too. Sitting in a pleasant synagogue, singing songs on a Saturday morning in concert with other like-minded individuals, and then being invited to someone’s home for a sumptuous repast, can be quite pleasant. I recall on a number of occasions how Rav Soloveitchik would say that the basis for plain, workaday fulfillment of the mizvot is yirah: i.e., simple fear of God.

Valuations

So we come to the end of Sefer Vayikra, which has taken us through a series of laws: sacrifices; purity and impurity of food, bodily discharges, etc.; holiness in sexual behavior and in general interpersonal ethics; the round of the year, and the grand round of 7 years and 7 times 7 years. And, at the end, concluding with blessing and curse, and the festive (seemingly) final verse: “These are the statutes and ordinances and laws which the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai by Moses” (26:46).

But wait! There is still one more chapter: a dry, legal chapter talking about something called “valuations,” with a strange Hebrew name, ‘erkekha, a phrase using the possessive suffix but constructed as a regular noun. And all this, describing a gift that a person chooses to give to the Temple, based davka upon the “value” of himself or his father or mother or child or wife. This whole thing is a kind of anti-climax, a bone stuck in throat. What is it doing here?

I will not address myself here to the substance of this mitzvah. My own explanation for this location (which may be completely off base) is that this is a kind of transitional chapter to Bamidbar, which is most difficult of the five books to understand, certainly in terms of its internal order and arrangement. I shall elaborate this point in Shabbat Bamidbar, which is no longer far away.