Torah Gems - August 1, 2008 Parashat Ma'asei

Torah Gems - August 1, 2008

Parashat Ma'asei

Compiled by Rabbi William Hamilton

"On all other liturgical occasions, the Jew basks in the warmth of a creative partnership with God. Only on rare occasions of national calamity does he throw himself completely upon the divine mercies." Professor Yochanan Muffs, the great biblical scholar, hones in on the season we prepare to enter this Shabbat with Rosh Hodesh Menachem Av and the nine bleakest days of Judaism's calendar.

Customs vary during "the nine days." As has been the case for the prior 12 days (since the 17th of Tammuz), weddings and overly joyous celebrations are not arranged. Many refrain from eating meat products (except on Shabbat) during the first eight days of Av (with the 9th of Av, of course, being a fast day), because the rabbis associated eating meat with joy.

Returning to Muff's laser-sharp appraisal of the theological mood of this season, I want to consider a teaching from his book, The Personhood of God, which bares on the Haftorah this Shabbat, penned by the prophet who accompanies us on our theological descent to Tisha B'av. As gloomy and ominous as things sound, Jeremiah offers a silver lining thanks to the body of his work in the book that bares his name.

Muffs highlights three divine aspects: power, love, and justice. "When justice combines with love, the result is 'creative justice.' In His love for man and need for his sympathetic collaboration, God calls upon him to translate the divine norms into concrete reality, to assume the moral responsibility for partnership with Him." Jeremiah is the prophet most associated with this moral optimism, which is woven throughout our daily, Sabbath, and Festival liturgy.

"When justice combines with power," continues Muffs, "the result is judgment and condemnation. This notion is most typical of Isaiah, who stresses more than all the other prophets God's absolute transcendence, holiness, power, and otherness and man's ultimate fallibility and weakness." "When justice combined with power is about to destroy the world, a new configuration makes itself manifest: power with love. This is the basic idea of Second Isaiah (the latter portions of Isaiah which seem to come from a matured, more sympathetic voice)." Having failed to realize our potential, humanity experiences God's mercy (the highest form of God's power) as justice recedes into the background. It is no accident that the Haftorot for the seven weeks of comfort, which lift us from Tisha B'av up to the High Holidays, all come from Second Isaiah.

{Parenthetically, Muffs generalizes (his ideas on power, love, and justice) onto Judaism, Islam, and Christianity: "If Judaism was somehow able to balance these three elements (power, love, and justice) in a creative but often uneasy harmony, Christianity and Islam each sundered the original triad, extracting one element and making it normative, often to the complete exclusion of the other two. In Christianity, love became normative to the exclusion of justice and power. In Islam, power became normative to the exclusion of love and justice." The Personhood of God, P. 87}

What does this have to do with this week's Haftorah? Jeremiah's words: "Just look at the nations of the world; did they ever exchange their gods - who are, after all, nothings - while My people exchanged Me for that which is without use! "(Jer.2:11). The prophet persists: "Can you think of anything more stupid than rejecting a spring of freshwater, for the brackish, water of a cistern, a broken one!"(Jer.2:13) And finally exhorts, "Do yourselves a favor, save your feet and be kind to your voice; and the people retort, 'Get off my back! I like my lovers!"(Jer.2:25)

Its no wonder God has reached the point of no return in enabling the destruction of the Temple (by the Babylonians in Jeremiah's day, and much later the Second Temple by the Romans).

Jeremiah's eyewitness account of Jerusalem in flames - his book of Lamentations - will soon be the core text around which our observance of Tisha B'av will collect.

Yet, here is where I find a silver lining. Muffs points out that it is none other than Jeremiah who becomes the prophetic embodiment of "justice and love" which inspires sympathetic collaboration, grounded hope, which, again, is woven into the core of our daily, Sabbath, and Festival liturgy. The prophet of doom and gloom is also the prophet who inspires agency, partnership, and hope. At a season when "national calamity" looms largest, Jeremiah, the body of whose work enables us to "bask in the warmth of creative partnership with God" is the messenger.


Shabbat Shalom and Hodesh Tov

Rabbi William Hamilton