Month: August 2021

All Consuming – Parshat Ki Tavo 5781

Eve PosenLeave a comment

Did you nibble on your children when they were young? I find that I can’t help it, and I mean this in the most motherly, unaggressive way you can imagine. Especially when my kids were babies, they were totally irresistible with their little rolls of love and sweet faces. I would devour them with my kisses. A few years ago, researchers developed a term for this feeling, which they call “cute aggression.” In other words, it’s the point at which something is so cute you just want to smoosh it or eat it up. Of course that feeling goes away as they mature and get a bit smellier and lose those baby rolls, but I still live for their snuggles (when they’re willing to snuggle). 

What’s been difficult these last 18 months is realizing how much we depend on human contact as a coping mechanism. We continue to give so much of ourselves without realizing we’re depleting our human contact reserves without the ability to refill them as often as we could before. This week, the Torah has an interesting and seemingly macabre teaching about how we give of ourselves physically and emotionally.

Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Ki Tavo, brings us closer to the final lessons God wants the Israelite nation to learn before they enter into the promised land. Our text reminds us again of the blessings and curses that come to us as we choose to follow or ignore the laws of the Torah. Specifically, we learn of the requirement to make an offering of “first fruits” for the priests in the Beit HaMikdash, and the different ways in which we are supposed to thank God and give praise (before prayer was a daily activity). Finally, the text reminds us of how we’re supposed to take time to rebuke one another when we’ve taken a misstep and the ways in which we can do so with compassion and kindness.

In the giving of these rules and laws we receive a strange lesson: “You shall eat your own issue, the flesh of your sons and daughters that God has assigned to you, because of the desperate straits to which your enemy shall reduce you.” At first glance, chapter 28, verse 53 is rather odd if not downright troublesome. Is God predicting that we’re going to need to eat our own children because of our enemies? That certainly makes me question if God has our best interests at heart. What could this mean if we move past a gruesome literal interpretation?

Perhaps the verse is a metaphor for the way in which we might “devour” or consume each other’s needs in times of trouble and moments of distress. This verse also reminds us that in old age, or in periods of struggle, we often turn to each other and give of ourselves in ways that might be all consuming. But that reminder comes with the warning that we risk depleting our personal resources when we let ourselves be consumed.  

Part of our daily humanity is finding the balance between giving and receiving support. When we don’t support others, we become disconnected from the community and turn into enemies, but when we don’t draw boundaries for ourselves, we can become our own enemies. May we take this lesson with us into the new year.

Promise Me This – Parshat Ki Teitzei 5781

Eve Posen1 Comment

As I was preparing for my bat mitzvah, I wondered why the boys were learning how to lay tefillin and a talit, and I wasn’t being taught the same. I like ritual, and I thrive on routine. I also respond well to tactile learning; I need to feel things, hold items in my hand in order to find connection. I decided I wanted and needed to learn how to lay tefillin, so my father agreed to help me learn. He taught me to wrap the soft black leather straps of my great grandfather’s tefillin around my small arms. I placed the well-worn box between my eyes and wrapped myself in my grandfather’s talit. I felt embraced in Judaism and connected to my past and my traditions.

And then my dad reminded me that talit and tefillin are not mitzvot you can take on just for a day. They are commandments which, once you’ve committed yourself, you must do for the rest of your life. In my case, my obligation to wear these garments had to be more than a teenage rebellion against a “boys only” culture. It meant being sure of my words and committing to the cause anytime I was in daily minyan. I had a choice to make. Saying “yes” to tefillin wasn’t like saying I wanted dessert tonight or deciding on a certain new pair of shoes, it was actually pushing me to fulfill a promise for my adult Jewish life. 

This week we read Parshat Ki Teitzei. We receive laws about war and taking care of hostages, laws about our clothing, laws about family relationships, including parents and children, laws about taking care of the poor, and so much more. Ki Teitzei is actually the Torah portion with the most number of mitzvot (commandments) in it, but the recurring theme is how we should execute and fulfill the mitzvot prescribed to us.

In the midst of these laws, God is establishing a society that will set safeguards on how we treat one another and how we’ll connect with all in our community. In Chapter 23, verse 24 God issues forth a commandment that I feel is one of the most important lessons to being true to yourself and others. “You must fulfill what has crossed your lips and perform what you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, having made the promise with your own mouth.”

The intent of this commandment is between God and the people; however, I believe the sentiment is one that should exist between people as well. What you say you’ll do, you must do. The Torah is asking us to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the commitments we make. This means that we must think deeply about what we’re committing to and whether or not we’re able to fulfill that commitment.

Parshat Ki Teitzei intends to remind us of the power of our words and our promises, and to think critically before we agree to do something so that we’re not letting the community (or ourselves) down. If we are all created in God’s image, then our promises to one another should be treated with the same respect as holy covenants.

The Danger of a Single Story – Parshat Shoftim 5781

Eve PosenLeave a comment
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at TEDGlobal 2009, bonus session at the Sheldonian theater, July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

A few years ago I was introduced to novelist Chimamanda Adichie through a TED Talk. In the video, Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice, and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. Specifically, the author relays a story of her experience going to university. Her roommate was startled to learn that she, a girl from Africa, could speak English and also know how to use an oven and stove. Chimamanda Adichie says, “What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.”

The danger of a “single story” is that we so often let one person’s narrative color our entire understanding of the issue or situation and don’t stop to take the time to actually look at all angles and facts about the story.

The concept of a single story and the problem behind it are not new; in fact they are very present in this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Shoftim. This is a section of Torah that completely focuses on the legal system, on justice, and on context. This text includes the commandment to establish judges and officers, as well as a listing of punishments for certain transgressions against mitzvot. We also learn about the laws surrounding false witnesses and murder.

As these laws are articulated, the rabbis worry about a single story narrative. While judicial matters are being discussed, the Torah puts out rules for how a case can be decided. In chapter 19, verses 15-21, they lay out a plan. “A single witness may not validate against a person any guilt or blame for any offense that may be committed; a case can only be valid on the testimony of two witnesses or more.” It goes on to talk about false testimony and the need for a thorough investigation.

The Torah is clearly trying to work against the single story narrative. Our text is instituting a protection against a “he said, he said” situation where there is no research or effort to back up statements or experiences. 

Throughout history the narrative of a single story has plagued minorities especially. From the evil of Haman in our Purim story, to the horrific genocide and displacement of the Maya people in Guatemala, to the Rohingya refugee crisis, when only one viewpoint matters, it can have unimaginable results. One single story or one single stereotype of a people can bring epic destruction and lasting consequences. In a world where misinformation and falsehoods are easier than ever to spread, Parshat Shoftim teaches us to investigate, to get a second, third, or fourth opinion, and to remember that single stories aren’t the whole story.

But Why?! – Parshat Re’eh 5781

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“Why?” It’s one of my most favorite and least favorite questions. I love asking the question “why” when I’m trying to get deeper and deeper into a problem working toward its solution. I don’t love it when I come up from all that digging empty handed. If I never actually get to the why, it eats away at me, gnawing at my core. Asking why is one of the first questions a child presents. It’s part of their innate curiosity, and it’s how they learn to engage with the world around them and think deeply about things big and small. And, it’s still one of my least favorite questions when it seems to be on an endless loop. 

The need to understand why something happens isn’t just a childlike curiosity, it exists in the Torah as well. We read Parshat Re’eh this week, as the Torah races to the finish line of its lessons. In our parshah we learn about the blessings and curses that will come with observance (or lack thereof) of the mitzvot we’re given. We receive some final warnings about following the laws against idolatry, laws for keeping kosher, and the importance of treating each other as equals. Finally, we receive some more information on our three pilgrimage festivals.

Throughout the Torah, God gives the commandments to the Israelites to celebrate the festivals. In each of the other places – in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers – God tells the Israelites how to celebrate the holidays. It isn’t until this week’s Torah portion that we learn the why. You can imagine the Israelites getting all of the rules, being told what they are supposed to celebrate, and how they’re supposed to do it. It was probably 40 years in the desert of the Israelites asking God, “But WHY?”

In true Torah form though, God withholds the why to encourage deeper questioning and discovery. In Exodus the Israelites respond to God in chapter 24, verse 7 with, “We will do, and we will understand.” Basically, they committed to learning and to understanding the why only after they were already engaging in action. What if the Israelites had only acted after all their “whys” were answered? They may never have taken the steps to form a cohesive community. They wouldn’t be a nation at all. Instead, their faith and trust led them to the “why” by first doing the “what.”

So often in our lives we get stuck on the why. Like a broken record, we’re unable to move past a certain point unless we get the explanation we think we deserve. However, Judaism is a tradition of action, of involving all of our senses, not just our critical thinking. The Torah in Parshat Re’eh is here to teach us that by taking action, we still get the answer we’re seeking, and it leaves us and the world much more fulfilled.