Not really a sermon, but . . .

It was an especially difficult week to be a Jew.  The week started as I opened my computer Sunday morning to read of the shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium.  Then came the news of the European elections where far right parties all over Europe had picked up an astonishing amount of votes, including three seats in the Parliament for the Greek essentially neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party.  And of course before last Shabbos even began, the news starting coming out of the states of yet another mass shooting.  Perhaps I should say it was a particularly hard week to be a human.

Usually what a rabbi is supposed to do is to find a great passage in the weekly Torah portion that will give us some sense of comfort in these times.  Religious attendance and communal gatherings will go up for a few weeks especially in Santa Barbara and in Brussels as we try to make sense of all these things and hope that our rabbis and priests and imams and ministers and teachers and philosophers can find just the right text to make sense of what is now an absurd repetition of the unthinkable and unbearable, making these things quite "thinkable" as they are so commonplace.  And although there are many good words to choose from in Parashat Naso, I would rather pull my thoughts, for what they are worth, from a conversation I had this week with a conversion student.  

While going over a list of standard "Jewish" terms, we came upon "Ner Tamid."  It was a bit of a test, as all of my conversion students are required to write a series of thought provoking essays in addition to identifying dozens of common words, concepts and objects in Judaism.  The essays are to be written over the course of months, but the vocabulary list itself is part of an interactive series of meetings at the end of the conversion time, in the last months leading up to Beit Din.  Before the first of these meetings, I ask the candidates to write a percentage next to each term -- 100% meaning "I feel strongly that I know what this means and can explain it in detail if asked" to 0% being "I don't know what this is."  Over the course of several meetings then we start with the 0% items and work through to the 100%s. 

In this case, "Ner Tamid" was a 0%, and so we walked into the Beit Kenesset and identified the "Ner Tamid," translated this as "Eternal light," talked about its placement and meaning in Torah and then what it might symbolically mean today.  An idea randomly popped into my mind and I asked, "So, if we call this an 'eternal' light, does the light ever go out?"

The candidate remained silent for a few moments and then replied with the beautiful honesty that I have come to expect from her, "Funny.  I guess I have never thought about it."

I laughed and told her it was all very practical.  Every once in a while someone from the community will enter the Synagogue some morning and see that light has gone out.  "It has happened to me once since I have been in Duisburg," I explained.  "Easy solution.  I called the Hausmeister, he came a bit later with a ladder, and once again the eternal light seemed eternal."

Seemed eternal.

Maybe I had never thought of it before either.  I had been one of the two at Abraham Geiger Kolleg to replace the batteries in the small Ner Tamid in our humble but lovely Beit Kenesset.  It was a necessary job that we did without thinking-- not necessarily to provide the illusion of a truly "tamid" Ner Tamid, but rather to do our best that one never had to see the lamp without light, regardless of how symbolic one would choose to see such a light.

My student and I chatted a bit more about the Ner Tamid and in the end I had to look at this every-day part of my existence a bit differently.  The Eternal Light is one of those contradictions of connotation and practicality for the reality is unescapable that the light is only eternal if maintained.   We call this light in the Temple that we now remember in every Synagogue an "eternal light" as if that is a passive reality, when in fact we are the ones doing all the work.  The day we stop tending the light it is not eternal.  Shouldn't this make us call into question what “eternal” means?

Of course the text is much more subtle.  The first source text in Torah of the Ner Tamid is in Exodus, 27:20, where the text is really talking about the work aspect.  The JPS translates the verse as "You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lights regularly."  This is not nearly as romantic sounding as the normal connation of eternal light.  The next verses however solidify the idea of the romantic light, that the lights should be set up outside of the dividing curtain to burn ". . . before the Eternal.  It shall be a (statute) from the Israelites for all time, throughout the ages." Indeed, a "Ner Tamid."  But the Hebrew I think is even more profound.  The word translating here as kindling is really "laalot" to ascend, which could render the verse paraphrased as "You shall command the Israelites to do the work that will cause light to continually ascend."

I think a lot of our words get a bit of a bad reputation because of the connotations we give to "spiritual" concepts.  Although we might not think about it, after a bit of reflection it is patently clear that we are the ones who light and maintain a "Ner Tamid" and that the word "Eternal" only has validity if the work is maintained.  It would be absurd to say "It is G-d's fault that I walked into Shul this Shabbat and the light was out over the Ark."  Yet it seems like we do indeed think this way with other "eternals."  We declare our eternal love for our partners and talk about love between parents and children as an immutable truth.  Yet when relationships fail and families fall apart and children become estranged we to tend to look to G-d and say "How could you let this happen?"

We will as a matter of course ask the same "eternal" questions regarding Brussels and Santa Barbara, and yes as well the seemingly exploding right wing in Europe, which will be some variation of the question of Theodicy, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" or simply, "How could G-d let this happen?"  We see the ethical contracts that we have with each other as a type of eternal light, and so we will once again react with surprise that the eternal light seems not to be functioning.  "People simply shouldn't do that/the light must always be on."  Yet the lights go out all the time and people treat each other like this all the time.

There is no easy solution.  But just like the eternalness of the light is predicated on the effort that goes into maintaining it, the first thing to do is to stop thinking that the message of Torah is to passively wait for G-d to manifest “eternity.”  Moreover we can stop the opposite reaction, to think of the light as the thing itself and kill ourselves trying perform the mitzvah of maintaining the light in the most perfect and halakhik possible manner, that we forget about the symbolism of the light itself.  If our life is primarily the performance hundreds of tasks in the hopes that if we perform well enough we will get to get the blessing promised in Torah, then the message of Torah itself is lost.  And then if we do not perform adequately than we to sit back and passively wait for the curse which comes from not eating from the right hekscher or not having the mezuzah at just the perfect angle.

The mitzvoth are not magic spells, they are rather the way that Jewish tradition slows us down in everything that we do that we may become conscious of the world around us as it is instead of what we fantasize and wish it to be.  The mitzvah of the eternal light is not to look at it, it is to participate in keeping it going “that light may continually ascend.”  If the observance of the mitzvoth causes our relationships to crumble than we are missing the point.  If the mitzvoth help us to be more self-aware and then profoundly aware of others, their needs and what our actions do to affect them, then the mitzvoth are performing their central function— to lead us to an existence where we have the ability to love our neighbors as ourselves.  In this reality and only in this reality are there no mass shootings.  Here the eternal light is eternal.

This doesn’t mean that I believe that by using the wisdom of our various traditions to see others as subject rather than objects that the shootings stop tomorrow.  But I do believe that the shootings are related to a systemic breakdown from a world that values objects much more than subjects for a million more reasons than can be discussed in a simple sermon.  I do, however, believe that the mass healing comes from a critical mass of many small healings.  One abusive family member that stops blaming his or her parent for their own behavior and gets the help necessary to escape that prison is one less lineage of violence that enters the world.  One less person taught that the others exist only to fulfill their needs is one less that acts on this belief be treating people as animals.

In the end, there is no “end” to this message.  A rabbi giving a sermon is supposed to have a good charge that gives us something that we can take away afterwards and use.  The reality of this type of message is that it usually ends up preaching to the choir, as it were.  This prevents us all from doing the work that we all without exception need to do—either we are already struggling towards that moment where we can radically see others as equals or we are not and then this message cannot be heard.  Moreover, it is absurd and almost insulting to tie the events of this week to us becoming more self-aware.  My clearer understanding of my own prejudices will not bring back the dead.  But there is a dark reality in our traditions and I imagine all traditions, that we focus on the pain that we have experienced and use that to obfuscate our own failings.  For us Jews, if we look clearly in the mirror, we have a very shameful history about talking about, for example, people of color with off-hand epithets that we would never accept directed towards us.  Yet we can somehow justify this as harmless at best or “well they deserve it” at worst.  This is not to even begin to address our rhetoric against other groups with whom we are in conflict, no matter how complicated the political and existential reality may be.  No!  We cannot weep and gnash our teeth at an assassin or mass shooting when we in any way participate in seeing and talking about others as untermensch regardless of how we justify the intent.  This is not political correctness, this is the simplest of “love your neighbor as yourself” Torah and ethics 101.  We may not be pulling the trigger but we are continuously releasing into the world the energy that lurks behind so many of these acts of violence.  Are my words of hate that may or may not incite me or another to an act of violence less worthy of condemnation than the words and thoughts that actually have led one to an act of violence? 

The message of the eternal light is that we look up to see it and think of what our daily contribution is to what we want to be eternal in the world.  If we objectify others and act purely that our selfish needs be fulfilled above the needs and desires of others then we are giving “light” to making self-gratification at other’s expense eternal.  If we use religion or narrative or racial epithets or all forms of bigotry to harm others that do not act or believe as we do, then that is the “eternal light that we maintain.”  But if we collectively shine a little light as we do the ethical basics— treat others as we wish to be treated—then we are no longer waiting for someone else to make the light magically eternal.  We take the responsibility upon ourselves.  Maybe with an ever increasing critical mass of these intentions to we achieve the tipping point that makes these acts of violence truly rare as opposed to the everyday horror that they are.