Torah, Danger, and Legacy, Chagigah 15b

From movement leaders to strongmen, the whole world is reeling from the abuses of men striving for greatness. But it’s never too late for a moral reckoning. Humility and decency must be our new metric for leadership.

This is a heavy and complicated and confusing time. But we must not respond to the spiritual overload by closing off our hearts. Let us pry our hearts open instead. Vayak-hel Pekudei 5786 Sermon One of the words I have heard most over the past two weeks since the war between the US, Israel, and Iran began: CONFUSING. Heartache, yes, and fear and outrage. And also: confusion. Consider this paradox: As soon as the United States and Israel initiated the war, Israelis were subjected to earth shaking ballistic missiles, all hours of the night, spiking anxiety, fear and uncertainty across the state, while Americans (who are not serving in the military) have paid no personal, immediate price other than the likely rise in gas prices. Nevertheless, those sleeping in bomb shelters overwhelmingly support the fire; those sleeping in suburbia demand it stop. Or this: The situation on ground in Iran is clouded by internet blackouts and massive amounts of dis- and misinformation that make reports coming out truly confusing. But as an Iranian friend, a dissident whose voice is not easily dismissed, begged us to consider: …most of the people on the ground—who are being bombed—are praying for the planes to keep coming, while those who sit and observe from afar are fighting for it to end. It’s confusing. Think about this: We are told that this war might be the last great hope for the people of Iran, even as it is self-evident that those directing the war care not in the least for the wellbeing of the people of Iran. We’re told that regime change is the only way toward a Middle East peace. Yet history warns of attempts at regime change—it turns out we’re not terribly good at this—and reminds us that aerial bombardment alone has never toppled a regime; it only leaves a dangerous vacuum. And we know well that a just and enduring peace will ultimately emerge not from hellfire bombardments, but from negotiated agreements. Perplexing. We hear Israeli officials argue that these actions are necessary in order to protect its borders and people from future harm, and yet we see that it is precisely these actions that are contributing to Israel’s isolation in the world, which may ultimately endanger its people—and Jews around the world—even more. And I’m confused too. After two and a half years of my incessant reminders/ pleas that our hearts are capacious enough to hold both and all truths, even those that seem to be contradictory, that we can cultivate the muscle, the emotional bandwidth to hold it all, I wonder if we have reached the tipping point—the point at which we break from trying to hold it all? There are many people today grieving—deeply—the 175 Iranian children and their teachers who were killed in Minab by a US Tomahawk missile two weeks ago, on the first day of the war. There are also many grieving—deeply—the many thousands of Iranian civilians who were gunned down by the regime in early January. There are few who are grieving both. And even fewer who grieve those Iranian school children, and the Iranian dissidents in the street, and the Israelis who were killed—including four children, three siblings and a friend—when a ballistic missile tore through their synagogue in Beit Shemesh and collapsed the mamad where they had taken shelter. Not to mention the more than twenty people killed in Beirut yesterday, or the six US crewmembers killed while refueling a plane, or the many others around the region who have lost their lives in the past two weeks to this war. All of these—every one of them!—human beings, created in God’s own image. You and I are neither policy makers, nor members of the war cabinet. And even still, there is a cost to our moral confusion in this moment. When the reality of the world becomes too complex, too violent, too contradictory—we face a spiritual and cognitive overload, which the human brain experiences as a threat. …In order to survive, we activate a psychological survival mechanism that’s called a “reductive bypass,” in which we trade accuracy for safety (or the perception of safety). Psychologist Arie Kruglanski (University of Maryland), who writes about radicalization and extremism, describes the human need for an answer on a given topic—any answer—to end ambiguity and confusion. …He calls it the Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC), when we– under high stress (like war)— “seize” on an interpretation that seems to make sense (maybe it came from someone we like or trust or otherwise align with), …and we “freeze” our minds against any conflicting information. This gives us a biological advantage: even a wrong, simple answer lowers our cortisol levels and therefore our distress. …Though we may still be hurting, grieving, and full of rage, we have traded the added pain of moral confusion and instead taken on moral righteousness, moral certainty, which is a balm for the soul. Kruglanski even developed a Need for Closure Scale so we can gauge our own propensity toward this type of thinking: Participants are asked questions to determine if we prefer consistent routines or the unexpected. If we like to consult many different opinions before forming our own view, or if we are more likely to make immediate determinations based on our own internal compass. (I took the test—happy to share my results over lunch… it will surprise no one.) But what is clear is that most of us share a very human need to “avoid ambiguity and quickly resolve uncertainty.” But this is a trap. This kind of reductive thinking may help our brains save energy for survival, but it also risks closing off our hearts. Making it so we feel for some victims, but not others. So we’re told that condemning the car ramming attack on the synagogue on West Bloomfield, MI this week—which endangered the many children on site in the Early Childhood Center— …is to invalidate the lived experience of the attacker, whose own family was apparently killed back in Lebanon. And to speak of that man’s back story, is to somehow justify his antisemitic attack. This is the same thinking behind the many agonizing conversations I had, these past 2 ½ years, with people who told me: I simply cannot year you talk about Palestinian civilians, until every last Israeli hostage is home. …And those who said: Why must you incessantly remind us of the remaining Israeli hostages while Gaza is being annihilated? …As if we have no other choice if we are to protect ourselves from the agonizing weight of all that heartache. Yes, we’ve made order out of the chaos in our brains, but to do so, we have cordoned off critical chambers of our hearts.Here, then, is yet another paradox: We need to protect our hearts, yes, but we must take care not to preempt them from feeling. The heart—lev—is the leitmotif of Parashat Vayakhel. There are 12 references to the heart in the first part of the parasha alone. …There are those who give with wise heart, willing heart, inspired heart (hakham-lev, nediv-lev, nasa’o libo), and there are those who build with heart, a sacred kind of wisdom and inspiration granted to the artisans. וַיָּבֹ֕אוּ כׇּל־אִ֖ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־נְשָׂא֣וֹ לִבּ֑וֹ Every person whose heart inspired him, came forward… (Ex 35:21) Why this repeated reference to the heart? Because when it comes to the artistry of the mishkan, this doorway to the holy, created by human hands, we are faced with a conundrum: Not only how was it possible for the people to source acacia wood and dolphin skins in the midst of the dry desert… but how did the artisans, by whose hands the sacred space was built, have the skills and knowledge to do what they did? Ramban states the problem clearly (35:21) : the abominable conditions in Egypt made it impossible for Jewish artisans to learn their trade in enslavement— …they learned only how to work with brick and mortar, not the finer metals and gems that would be required for the holy work of the mishkan. So how then did they manage to create something so complex and beautiful? They realized, Ramban explains, that if they brought their full hearts to the work, God would help them discern how to overcome the [skill gap] and create something beautiful. Here we turn to Bezalel, a boy of only 13 who had spent his entire life enslaved in Egypt, only to be called, upon liberation, into the role of chief architect of the world’s most magnificent work of art, the mishkan. (Sanhedrin 69b) How could a child of such tender age—a person who has known only oppression—possibly have the wisdom, the creativity, the imagination to realize the holy aspirations of a people physical form? …How could someone raised in the narrowest of constraints manage to dream such expansive possibilities? And why is it that nearly every time Bezalel is mentioned in the Torah is called not only by his first name, but by his lineage: בְּצַלְאֵ֛ל בֶּן־אוּרִ֥י בֶן־ח֖וּר Betzalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. (Ex 31:2, 35:30, 38:22, even I Chron 2:20). Why would the Torah, so terse, so disinclined toward superfluous words, repeat this ancestry again and again? Because being the grandson of Hur is essential to Bezalel’s story. …Hur, who is best known for holding up one of Moses’s flagging arms as the people battled Amalek. Hur, whom the midrash tells us confronted the Israelites when they—fearing that they’d been abandoned by Moses—demanded a golden calf. “You fools,” Hur said. “Do you not remember all the miracles the Holy One performed on your behalf?” And immediately, the people rose up and stoned him to death (Exodus 32:5). That travesty—the public murder of Bezalel’s grandfather by his own people—was only three months before Bezalal was called into service for that same Israelite people. Bezalel’s father, Uri, was still an avel when the building began. And yet there he was… a child born into anguish, experiencing fresh trauma, and called into service for the people, for God. …I have endowed him, God says, with a divine spirit. With wisdom, insight, and knowledge. He is a master of every kind of craft. Through him, this holy place will be built. (Ex 31:3) Bezalel must have been so confused! Perplexed! It’s so damn complicated! And yet this boy, this precious, beautiful boy, shows up with a full heart. A heart full of anguish, yes, but also full of בְּחָכְמָ֛ה וּבִתְבוּנָ֥ה וּבְדַ֖עַת … wisdom, insight and knowledge. …As Rashi explains: wisdom is what we learn from others. Insight, that’s what we glean from paying attention to ourselves after we receive all the inputs from the world, if we’re quiet enough to listen to our own inner voice. And knowledge, that’s רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ – acquired by God. Bezalel could hold it all. And from that sacred mix of grief and hope, he is able to create the kind of beauty that helps the people—in all their brokenness—heal. Bezalel could hold it all. And I know that we can too. I’m grateful to Elana Stein Hain for sharing, this past week, a piece written by the Protestant theologian Peter L. Berger (“Introduction,” Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position, pps. 8-9). …Berger argues that the suppression of doubt is a prerequisite to fundamentalism. And to demonstrate this point, he shares a personal anecdote: He went on a few dates with “an attractive and intelligent young woman” whom he “soon discovered… was an ardent member of the America Communist Party, which somewhat dampened [their] relationship. He writes: Of course we argued about this. She was unwilling to accept any negative information about the Soviet Union. When I spoke about atrocities in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, she asked me whether I had personally witnessed these atrocities. …When I said no, she said, “Well, I really would like to meet someone who has.” I quickly said, “This could be arranged.” Well, arrange it I did, and it was a revealing event. I was friendly with a young couple recently arrived from Latvia. They invited me and my communist not-quite-girlfriend to supper. …After some awkward chitchat, I asked them to talk about the Soviet occupation of Latvia. They told one horror story after another. …My date sat quietly at first, then became increasingly agitated. After almost an hour she put her hands to her ears and said, “I don’t want to hear any more of this.” …As we walked away from my friends’ apartment, I asked her if she thought that they were lying. No, she replied, the people did not impress her as liars. …But then she added, “You know, I think there is something, if we could only find it, that would completely change what they were saying.” …Evidently, she had found a magical pill against cognitive dissonance. The party was well equipped to provide such medicine. She never agreed to see me again. There is no magic pill. There is only an ever expanding heart. We’re so triggered by the massive amount of human heartache—unfolding all around us, at warped speed, perpetrated by men who—if one is to believe their posts—seem to think that this is all a game, that human life is dispensable and disposable. I know that it’s heavy and complicated and confusing. But we must not respond to the spiritual overload, to the need for cognitive closure, by handicapping our hearts. …Bezalel, too, lived a confusing, complicated reality. He felt it all… and from the place of all that heartache emerged something truly beautiful. The same can be true for us. This is the labor: to trust that when we care for one another,  it does not diminish our care for ourselves. To expand our notion of tribe, and those to whom we are, fundamentally, responsible. To build muscles—through gentle stretching and intentional exposure—that help us recognize that our way is not the only way. To learn to see the thing from all sides, rather than turn—as the social scientists say—a 50-sided conflict into a 2-sided “Good vs. Evil” narrative, and breaking our own hearts in the process. We can do better. We can trust in love. We can create microcosms of the complex, beautiful world we want to live in. We can listen and we can learn, we can share and we can stretch and we can sing. And from that full hearted expression of our broken hearts, I know that something beautiful will be born.

This is a recording of Rabbi Morris Panitz’s session of For the Love of Learning 5786 series. Every Tuesday morning, a new story from the Talmud. Taught by your rabbis in a monthly rotation, we’ll dig into the strange and compelling world of the Talmud, exploring the ways ancient dilemmas speak to modern questions. Join us in-person at the Event Space (coffee and nosh provided) or over Zoom (B.Y.O. nosh) for as many sessions as possible… your Tuesday will thank you.