Paraschat Vaera - Duisburg 5774

            Years ago I worked as a pastoral counselor with a gentlemen who had a remarkable story. About 10 years before I began working with Matt, he had in a short time lost all that at the time had meaning to him.  In the space of several months his wife left him (taking most all of the family friends) after which he fell pray to a Reduction In Force – the painfully euphemistic way of saying “was laid off.”  Quickly the debt piled up until the only phone calls he received were those from creditors.  Feeling alone and without hope, he began to plan his own death.

            Two warning signs of how serious a suicide wish is are having a concrete plan and physically writing out the note.  Both had been done, and on the day of the plan he recounted that he had said to himself, “If there is a single person in the world that still cares about me, I will not go through with this.”

            That night, after returning from the last day of the temp job he had taken to try to pay a bill or two, there was a message on the answering machine.  Sandwiched in between a dozen calls from collection agencies was the voice of a former roommate who had once been a dear friend and confidant that he had not heard from in years.

            “Hey Matt, just thinking about you a lot lately and you were really on my heart today.  Just wanted to touch bases and see how you were.  I love you.”

            Needless to say, since I am able to retell this story, Matt filed away his note to remind him of what he almost did, and moved on.  Ten years later he still had a lot of issues to deal with, but had achieved a sort of peace and success that he could not have imagined during that painful period.

            This idea of someone unexpectedly appearing in our life appears quite often in the Tanakh.  This week in Vaera the narrative begins with “The Eternal appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest time of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing across from him. When he saw them he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.” Gen 18:1-2.

            First of all, unless there is a narrative gap between verse 1 and 2, it should come as somewhat of a shock to read that the Eternal appeared to Abraham in the form of three men.  I believe it is more helpful to see the text as a spiritual truth that the work of the Eternal is accomplished by the hands of humans—that the original meaning of “angel” was simply that of messenger – he or she that acted as was needed in a moment to help someone else onto the right path or off of the wrong one.  As a matter of interpretation and expansion of these themes, I was particularly affected this week by the “D’var Acher” in ReformJudaism.org’s “10 Minutes of Torah” for Vaera.  Rabbi Jay TelRav, of Temple Sinai in Stamford, Connecticut writes:

I am often asked by congregants about the words in parentheses found in our prayer book, Mishkan T'filah. There are other examples, but the one most often noted is in the second paragraph of the Amidah wherein we offer a blessing to Adonai who "gives life to all," but then are given the alternative to recite in its place "[You] revive the dead." That traditional formulation had been removed from previous Reform liturgy, but has been returned in our new prayer book (Mishkan T'filah, p. 78).

Brandeis professor, Jonathan Sarna, explains that earlier Reform Jews found the theme of resurrection to be too challenging to their theology. The traditional translation of this prayer suggests that there will be a resurrection of all who ever lived at the coming of Messiah. Reform Jews, preferring a more rational liturgy that focused on the physical world around them, were more comfortable reciting the words "God gives life to all." Yet, as I reflect on Rabbi Kroloff's teaching, I am reminded of the Talmudic lesson supplied by the editors of Mishkan T'filah (see p. 79).

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: One who sees a friend after a lapse of twelve months [makes the blessing]: "Blessed are You, Adonai, who revives the dead" (Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 58b).

In other words, when I bump into someone who had drifted from my current thoughts and has returned as a surprise, I can thank God for bringing that person back to life-that is, back to my life. This alternative allows me to recite our Amidah prayer with a new intention-as I thank God for all the other blessings in my life, so too, I am thankful for the renewed awareness of individuals who reappear in my life and remind me of their preciousness and value.

I love this for two reasons:  First of all, I am constantly fighting against the perceptions that our texts—from Torah to Tanakh to Talmud et. al. need to be seen through literal eyes.  If my interpretation does not match the interpretation of those with whom I am having a discussion, I am accused of interpreting texts to suit my own needs.  Other than the fact that that is completely true, it is simply a very Jewish thing to do!  There is no absolute meaning to “revives the dead.”  Like all other texts we can indeed look at clear meaning of the text, but that is only equally as important as interpreting symbolically, allegorically or even through the eyes of mystical tradition.  Here our sages show exactly how it is done: Take a text and then breathe life into it by making it spiritually meaningful to our every day lives.  Second, I think that this interpretation says a lot about those of us without the gene or inclination to stay as connected as we most likely should—we get so caught up in our every day that we forget to work at making sure that those we love are alive to us.  We ignore and forget until we are blessed by that unexpected visit or phone call or Email and we can say “Thank you Eternal one for reminding me of my love for this person and their love for me.  Thank you that they are alive in me.”

I would personally, however, like to put a slightly different spin on this.  The Talmud states that we recite the blessing, “Blessed are You, Eternal, who revives the dead,” but it does not state who is dead.  The assumption is that those that we see after the year have been like dead to us, but what if we are the ones that are dead?

As we sit in our tent at the hottest part of the day, are we alive to the needs of those around us?  Every day we get little sparks of intuition in the back of our minds and hearts.  Some name or face pops up and we think, “I wonder how they are doing?”  When we are metaphorically dead—when we are purely in the state of self-absorption in our own lives and problems—the thought comes and goes and we move forward on our path.  But what about Matt’s friend?  She had felt the spark and heard the internal question and as she was alive and beyond her ego enough to actually listen. She made a phone call and literally saved a life.

Certainly every moment of intuition is not a life and death situation, but as one of those people that gets these thoughts all the time and all too seldom does anything about them, it is worth using these passages to ask the question, are we right now alive or dead to those around us?  Is our own daily grind so much more important that a 2-minute email or 5-minute phone call? 

Are we prepared to be there when the Eternal needs to appear through us to help someone else?  Are we alive?

Shabbat Shalom