Seeing, Crying and VisionRabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman Kol Nidre 5771This evening I would like to bring to your attention - a group that has greatly enriched my life over the last few years. There is a gathering twice a month right here of the beit midrash kehilati. We study Talmud together. Thanks to the learning and ongoing discussions we have held I have been able to fulfill the prayer “enlighten our eyes with Your Torah”. Last year I decided we would study the second chapter of the tractate Chagigah. This includes one of the most famous Talmudic “sugiyot”- known as “Four who entered the PaRaDeS”. It tells of four rabbis who engage in mystical speculation. It is one of the few mystically oriented sugiyot in the Talmud and is the basis for much of the Kabbalistic tradition. We don’t study entire tractates only selected chapters. The sugya that interested me is from the second chapter. I planned on devoting one session to general survey of the various mishnayot in all three chapters of the tractate. We discovered so much interesting material in the first mishna of the first chapter that we haven’t finished the first chapter yet. As you might guess the tractate of Chagigah deals with chagim – festivals. The first Mishna discusses the mitzvah of pilgrimage on the festivals. This mitzvah is called “reh-a-yon” “the seeing”. It is based on the verse from Exodus “You shall celebrate three pilgrimage festivals…three times a year all your males shall make themselves seen before the Lord Adonai. (23.14-17) The Mishna states that all obligated by this mitzvah but right away it lists those who are not obligated: All are obligated to fulfill the mitzvah of Reh-a-yon except: the deaf, the mentally ill, the minor, the tumtum, the hermaphrodite, women, slaves, the lame, the blind, the sick, the elderly, and whoever is unable to walk. By discussing this list the gemara reveals the attitude of the Rabbis to all kinds of people in ancient Israelite society. In our discussion about women we related to the status of women in Jewish society then and now. The Talmudic discussion of the people with various disabilities allowed us to use the Rabbis statements to examine our own attitudes towards the disabled. When we studied the passages about mental illness I invited a psychologist to join us. We were surprised to discover that the standard tools that the Rabbis suggested as a way to diagnose mental illness are strikingly similar to those used by the mental health community today. The tumtum is the person of indeterminate gender, as opposed to the hermaphrodite who has both male and female genitalia. We discussed gender and sexuality in ancient times and today. Some of the regular participants in the group are also active in the LGBT community – so we had a particularly rich discussion. The chapter repeatedly comes back to the blind person. This makes sense considering the mitzvah is call “seeing”. But why should a blind person be freed of the obligation from being seen in Jerusalem on the festival? There is a subtle word play- “Three times a year…ye-rah-eh you shall be seen. By changing the vocalization yehraheh (be seen) becomes yireh (you shall see). There are two components to this mitzvah – being seen (by God) and seeing. Pilgrimage is in order to see and be seen. Since the blind cannot see, mutuality is impossible. The blind person is freed of this obligation. There is a Biblical precedent for this word play. When Abraham sacrifices the ram after the binding of Isaac and it says: Abraham called the place Adonai Yireh (will see) for it can be said that on the mountain Adonai yeh-rah-eh (was seen). (Genesis 22.14) We were disturbed that the rabbis seem to exclude people from performing this mitzvah. However the Rabbis don’t forbid anyone from pilgrimage; they “simply” free them of the obligation. On one level, this is to free people with special needs from what might be a burdensome obligation. Nonetheless, we were disturbed. It seemed to us that those freed of the obligation might not be seen as full participants in society. I felt that freeing people from the obligation to “see and be seen” was an attempt to make them invisible. After months of studying the halachic material in the Gemara we got to the non-halachic material. The Gemara states: When Rav Huna got to the verse “Three times a year all your males shall make themselves seen before the Lord Adonai. (23.14-17) he would weep! He said: It is like a slave whose master expects to see him and in the end pushes him away! While the Temple stood God expected to see us. Now the Temple is destroyed- God has pushed us away. The Gemara continues with a series – rabbi after rabbi and the verses that made them cry. The crybaby rabbis, we called them. What made them cry? Verses about the destruction of the Temple and the suffering of exile made them cry. This leads to a midrash on a difficult verse about crying, tears and exile. What struck the rabbis about this verse is that it is God who cries. It says in Jeremiah: If you do not heed me, I will hide and I will weep because of your arrogance. I will cry and cry (domo-ah tid-meh) my eyes will flow with tears because my flock has been taken into captivity (13.12) Rabbi Eliezer asked: Why are tears mentioned three times in the verse? Once for the First temple, a second time for the Second Temple and the third – for the exile. People and God see. People and God cry. The study about seeing and crying felt like a preparation for the High Holidays. There is lots of seeing and crying both human and divine in this season. We read about lots of crying on Rosh Hashana. On the first day we read of Hagar and Ishmael, banished from Abraham’s tent. Hagar cries when she sees Ishmael’s suffering. The tears blind her. The verse says: God opened her eyes and she saw a well and she gave the boy water. (Genesis 21.17) The story of the binding of Isaac – according to the midrash the angels watching the binding weep and their tears drop into Isaac’s eyes. Thus Isaac goes blind. It says: When Isaac was old his eyes dimmed (Genesis 22.14)
After he sacrifices the ram Abraham:...called the place God will see because on the mountain God was seen. (Genesis 22.14) On the second day of Rosh Hashana we read a haftara with words echoing the mishna in Chagigah. Jeremiah has a vision of the ingathering of the exiles: Behold I bring them from the north and I will gathered them from the ends of the earth- among them the blind, the lame, the pregnant. The woman giving birth all together…they will come weeping, I will lead them…(31.7) The prophet continues with the image of the weeping matriarch. A voice is heard in Ramah, bitter weeping as Rachel cries for her children…Adonai says: Stop crying, wipe your eyes. There is a reward for your deeds, Adonai declares, they will return from the land of the enemy. There is ultimate hope…the children will return to their borders. (14-15)
The messianic vision includes the disabled and women all together. Out of the pain and tears hope emerges- the children will return home. I want to note one more Biblical reference that echoes throughout Yom Kippur. We just prayed (on page 133) “Forgive this people for their sin – as Your compassion is great and as You carried them out of Egypt up til now. This is a quote from Numbers (14.15) Moses says them to God after the sin of the spies. God responds: I have forgiven as you have said. (14.20) The sin of the spies is an integral part of the Yom Kippur liturgy. It is a story filled with seeing, blindness and crying. The spies set out to scout the land and see it. All but Caleb and Joshua are blind to what they see. They can’t see the potential of the land and their own potential. The spies report: The land that we scouted devours its own inhabitants. The people we saw there are formidable. We saw the giants – we seemed like grasshoppers in our own sight and that’s how we looked to them. (Numbers 13.31-32) The people cried that night (14.1)
The Rabbis carefully constructed our service. They purposefully chose words that we have been saying for centuries. The sin of the spies is central to the Yom Kippur liturgy because it demands that we see in a special way. We are supposed to be aware of our failings and sins. But we must not be blind to our strengths. The sin of the spies is that the people put their faith in leaders blind to hope. What made you cry this past year? There were times I wanted to cry. I felt that our contemporary Temple was threatened. On the one hand there is increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world today. I am disturbed by the inability (or unwillingness) of many to distinguish between the policies of the Israeli government and our right to a national homeland. On the other hand I want to cry when Israeli democracy is threatened and when organizations devoted to protect the weakest members of Israeli society are attacked. As the prophet Jeremiah said – the vision of a perfected world includes women and the disabled. I made aliyah to a country that filled me with hope and idealism and the belief that we could be worthy to build a just and egalitarian society. The prophetic vision was the basis of the Zionist vision that meant more than simple Jewish survival. Without physical survival we wouldn’t have any kind of country- but we must not despair of our ability to build a just society living in peace with its neighbors. We mustn’t let tears of fear or disappointment blind us. We must be aware of our strengths. We are part of a community with enormous capabilities. We must see ourselves clearly and transform this awareness into a true vision. It says in Proverbs: Without a vision the people fall apart (29.18)
We need a vision to give us strength during these times of despair and apathy, when many of our leaders tell us there is no hope. I believe studying Torah can be a source for a vision. The midrash in the tractate of Chagigah about God crying continues and says: Our Rabbis taught – God cries about a few things every day. One is that people don’t study Torah. God cries because we don’t use this resource that He gave us. I don’t mean Yeshivah type study – to escape from the outside world as it exists in Haredi society. The talmid hacham is not supposed to be isolated in the beit midrash and study only sacred texts. It says in Pirkei Avot: Who is wise? The one who learns from everyone. (4.1)
True Talmud Torah demands openness to the other. That is why ideally Jewish study happens in pairs or small groups. As Melila Eshed-Helner describes in her book on the Zohar: Human contact with the divine, then, is not the fruit of the soul’s seclusion with its divine source, but rather the product of the resonances and echoes among human beings speaking with one another. The spoken word among companions, the response, the conversation of Torah, and its explication, are the ladder for the soul’s exaltation and for the possibility of touching the divine world. The connections between people – between a man and a woman, a sage and his colleague, or a person and a stranger chanced upon “on the way” who together open words of Torah – are of mystical value in the Zohar. Their joining in love on earth is a kind of healing (tikkun), which in turn generates healing and mending in the upper worlds. The presence of the other person is not an obstacle to mystical life, but rather a necessary precondition for it. (A River Flows from Eden) The divine is found in true study. I felt blessed to experience God’s presence in the beit midrash. In general these were moments when I was listening to someone and learning from them.
I hope that the coming year will be a year of learning from one another - whether it is in formal or informal settings.
In particular I pray that our eyes will be open and our hearts as well to learn from each other. Let’s not be so sure that we have the exclusive truth. True learning has the potential to help us see the world through new eyes. I want to conclude with the opening of a poem by Natan Zach, I Want to Always Have Eyes.
I want to always have eyes so I can see
The beauty of the world and to praise this beauty
So wonderful and perfect and to praise
The one who made it beautiful worthy of praise
Full, so full of, beauty
| 
