My class honored me by electing me to speak last night, on a text of their choosing. Here are my remarks (with one or two corrections): It is a tremendous honor to have been asked by my class to speak on their behalf tonight. It is a special honor, since they have already heard me speak a lot over the years. So that they asked me to speak a little more is also a great tribute to their patience. The text our class has chosen, from the Talmud Bavli, Masechet Shabbat, is a vision of the portal to the world to come. The Babylonian sage Rava tells us that when we stand at the threshold of the world to come, we will be quizzed about the life we lived. אמר רבא בשעה שמכניסין אדם לדין אומרים לו: נשאת ונתת באמונה? קבעת עתים לתורה? עסקת בפור? צפית לישועה? פלפלת בחכמה? הבנת דבר מתוך דבר? ואפה אי יראת ה היא אוצרו אין אי לא לא. Rava said: When a person is judged, she is asked: “Were you trustworthy in your dealings? Did you set regular times for the study of Torah? Did you engage in procreation? Did you look forward to salvation? Did you debate wisely? Did you come to understand one thing by analogy with another?” And even so if fear of heaven was her treasure, it will be well; and if not, not. We have all been in rabbinical school for a long time -- so it’s no surprise that we’ve chosen a text that envisions life as . . . . well, as a sort of a very long rabbinical program -- and the passageway to the next world as a kind final meeting with our academic advisor. I picture myself sitting in some heavenly version of Rabbi Peretz’s office, as she runs down the list, making sure I’ve fulfilled all my requirements. Honest in your affairs? Check. Study on a regular basis? Check. Raise a family? Check. Deep religious life? Check. Develop your intellect? Check. It is a demanding list: There’s a heavy emphasis on Torah study -- but study is balanced against prayer, and intellectual development against ethics, and the pursuit of truth against family life. It’s a curriculum, much like the one we’ve now completed, aimed at creating not only an observant Jew, but a well-rounded human being. But can this really be what life amounts to? Eight sections of regular torah study, thrice daily prayer, 2.2 children -- and then we get checked off? Rava doesn’t think so. That is why, at the end of his imagined scene, he suddenly drops the conceit. No more questions. No more requirements. Instead, he tells us, everything turns on whether we lived our lives with yirat shamaim -- “in fear of heaven.” If living that way was something we held dear in life -- then our life was a good one. And it was a good one even if we didn’t hit every item on the list. But if we did not live that way -- then our life is ultimately accounted a failure, no matter what we accomplished. It’s as if Rava is telling us -- “Yes, all these things matter -- they are all elements of a meaningful life. But they are not enough.” What is enough? What is yirat shamaim, “fear of heaven”? Notice that it is something for which we are to be “checked off.” There is no 6-unit class; there is no final; no one is going to quiz us on our yirat shamaim. This is because no one can. “Everything is in the hands of Heaven,” says Rabbi Chanina a few pages later, “everything is in the hands of Heaven -- except for fear of heaven.” Living with yirat shamaim is something for which we are uniquely responsible -- and for which, at the end of our lives, we are solely accountable. We can get away with not living this way. That is what Rava is telling us. If we did not live with yirat shamaim, no one will know. No one, that is, but us. And that is why to live “in fear of heaven” is not, as Christopher Hitchens once said, to imagine ourselves under continual surveillance by a celestial Big Brother. Just the opposite: It is to care about how we live when we know that we are unseen. Living with yirat shamaim is to struggle to live with integrity -- to live as integrated human beings, to live as we feel we should, not only in public, but in private, when no one is looking. It is the struggle to be as we seem. It is about those parts of our inner selves that, by their very nature, cannot be seen; evade detection; evade assessment. Why call this “fear”? Because a life of integrity matters so very much. Because it is all too easy to persuade ourselves that if no one has noticed something, then it isn’t happening. Easy to believe that what lies in darkness is unreal. Easy to grow, in the words of Saul Bellow, evasive with our own souls. To live always in yira, then, is another way of saying that we should strive always to remind ourselves just how high the stakes are -- especially when is no one else is there to remind us. This is the great project of a Jewish life, and perhaps of all religion: Not to hide from ourselves, or from God; to allow light to shine on the dark places of the heart. To live with yira is to aspire to shed light everywhere, in spite of our fear. And it is frightening, not because we will be found wanting if we fail, but because to live in the darkness is not to live at all. The Psalmist wrote that the sacrifice God desires is a broken heart -- a heart broken open to let the light in. Nothing more, and nothing less, is asked of us. This class is composed of some of the most open-hearted people I’ve ever had the privilege of getting to know. My prayer for us is that once we are given the heavy title of Rabbi, once we leave the embrace of the Ziegler School and stand up in front of people who know us less well -- that even then we remain open to ourselves, to our new communities, and above all to God.
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 16:12:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015