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Ad matai reshaim Adonai
ad matai reshaim yaalozu
How long shall the wicked, O Lord,
how shall the wicked exult (Psalm 94:3)?
We would like to suggest another translation. How
long shall reshaim continue to exist, Adonai? How long will they
rejoice? Reshaim is translated as “wicked”; a rasha is
the opposite of tzadiq, a pious, righteous person. The Psalmist and
other biblical writers juxtaposed tzedeq and rasha. The
absence of sense of tzedeq brings in its wake an approach which we
call rasha. All of us, in our journey through life, have
encountered people whom we would gladly place in either category. But
every so often, we encounter individuals who are neither completely one
nor the other. They seem to live in a gray area; neither in the sunlight
of tzedeq or in the darkness of rasha. Most of our Jewish
tradition addresses itself to that gray area. The people who haven’t
made up their mind one way or another. Didn’t Rabba once say that the mitzvot
are not needed by God, but by us humans, to help us to find our way in
life, and possibly reach someday the level of tzadiq?
Most times, we neither assign one person or another
to either of the two extreme categories of tzedeq and rasha.
For a question arises: Is it possible to get out of the gray area, and
address ourselves to the possibility of joining the area of light? Some
would say that whenever you perform a mitzvah, you are putting your
toe before the foot, into the living waters of righteousness. You don’t
have to swim in the whole pool, you just have to take the chance of
placing your toe in the pool. Opportunities for mitzvot are legion,
from having a smile on a dour day, to helping prepare someone’s final
rest, from feeding the hungry, to giving advice to a troubled soul; from
paying attention to a neglected part of nature (plant, animal, or human),
to helping someone across the street. Wherever you turn in life, the
opportunity for a mitzvah arises. So, in Judaism, we say “Yes, you can
go from the gray to the light.” HZS
A
Big Ol’ Fish Story
Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,
saying, “I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me
into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:1-3).
A fish came and swallowed him. Jonah prays, thanking
for his miraculous rescue. He prays and prays and prays; and after three
days this is too much for the big ol’ fish, and he throws up. Some
exegetes consider the Book of Jonah a satire, full of irony; the narrator
wants to express the opposite of what he or she says. Too pious a prayer
can make even a fish puke.
DJT
Halo atah me-qedem Adonai
Elohai qedoshi, lo namut
You, O Lord, are forever.
My holy God, you never die
(Habakuk
1:12
).
Habakuk was a man of great faith; we know very
little of his life and even less of his ministry. It’s a short book, but
filled with profound messages. Consider the words we quoted. Why would
anyone speak of God as someone who never dies? Obviously, Habakuk was
speaking not only to contemporaries but also to the world around. It was
filled with dying and born-again gods. In some parts of the
Fertile Crescent
, there were seasonal ceremonies of the dying and the born-again god, and
at these ceremonies, you had to relive the ritual, almost as if each year
were a beginning-time again. Our Hebrew biblical tradition quotes this
statement of Habakuk in order to let us know that when we speak of
God, it’s not a seasonal affair. You, God, have been there from time
everlasting. When one walks through life with such deep feelings about the
eternity of God, one is truly blessed.
Can you imagine? No matter what confronts you, even
death, why worry? Some part of you will link up again with the
Everlasting. Some might even call it an insurance policy. That’s the
meaning of faith in Jewish thought, emunah, of the same root as the
word amen, and it means not only “amen” (that’s true) but
also “amen” (I’m bound, tied, linked, rooted). HZS
Dor le-dor yishabach maasekha
u-gevurotkha yagidu.
Each generation praises Your deeds
and speaks of Your might (Psalms 135:4).
From one generation to the next, one hears the
sounds of awe and wonder when viewing the world You created. Your
continuous vigor and the telltale marks of Your presence and existence
abounds.
When Ecclesiastes said, “Generations come and go,
the earth is on its axis,” I’m sure he was expressing a sense of awe
and wonder. How can it be? What is the secret of a continually surviving
universe? We of the faith community of
Israel
would say, “The wonder of the universe is its sense of endurance.”
Earthquakes, destructive fires, and flood come and go, and yet the
universe continues. Even the human mismanagement and devastation of nature
hasn’t affected its integrity. True, species have disappeared, yet
others have arisen in their place.
In our studies, we’ve realized that contained
within each of us is our own curative process, our own inner physician.
This too is part of the awe and the wonder. Seasons come and go,
generations come and go. The assurance of Genesis, of the regenerative
possibilites of all that is and all that will be, brings hope and peace to
us. Every generation lauds Your deeds, and each in its turn tells us of
Your essential strength. Eternity is the seal, faith is the glue.
Together, generations come and go, and You the Creator are here to remind
us of the truth of the tale told time and again. HZS
Thank
God We Are Rich
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your
neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything
that belongs to your neighbor (Exodus
20:17
).
Just for a moment consider the possibility the Ten
Commandments were not delivered with thunder and lightning, leaving Moses
standing on the mountain, two heavy stone tablets under his arms. Who
could have written them?
Someone who owned a house. A married businessman, who had
men and women working for him, who counted among his possessions an ox and
a donkey, i.e. a truck and a car. Or do you think an unmarried slave girl
would have asked for this kind of protection?
DJT
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