I came across, this week, a new version – to me - of an old argument.
The old argument, between
two rabbis both of whom have been dead for almost 2000 years is about the Klal
Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.
If you could strip the entire Jewish
tradition back to just one verse – what would you go for.
Rabbi Akiva, says that the Klal
Gadol -greatest organising principle of the Torah is Love your neighbour as
yourself – Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Lev 19:18. It’s a popular answer. It comes in amongst
the top two verses Jesus goes for in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
But Ben Azzai has a different suggestion,
and his verse from Genesis 5:1) is less well known.
Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra
elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.
This is the book of the
descendents of Adam on the day God created Adam in the image God.
It’s an odd verse. For a start it
doesn’t seem to demand anything, doesn’t seem to get a person to do anything.
But I think Ben Azzai has the
same problem, or maybe the same three problems with Akiva’s favourite verse,
Jesus’ favourite verse as I do.
Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Love your
neighbour as yourself sounds great,
Problem One
What if you don’t love yourself? What
about people experiencing a darkness in terms of how they think of themselves?
Problem Two
What if the thing you love
actually causes other people pain? Should you do painful things to other people
just because you like them being done to you?
And the biggest problem of them
all
What if you can look at another
human being and decide – they aren’t my neighbour?
What if you look at someone and because,
I don’t know, of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or their
passport, or their religion, that they aren’t your neighbour – Loving your
neighbour as you love yourself isn’t going to stop a person from being sexist,
racist, antisemitic or any of the rest of it.
I think it’s pretty clear that
Rabbi Akivah would never countenance sexism, racism or any of the rest of it, but
there are these three problems with his Klal Gadol.
That’s what I think Ben Azzai
knew when he said that the greatest Klal in the Torah is
Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra
elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.
This strange, not very famous
verse that tells us that every human being is created in the Image of the
Divine and that we all descend from the same Adam – the same first human being.
So even if you are feeling a darkness,
courage!, you are made in the Image of God.
So when it comes to how we treat other
people, the really important thing to know is that they too are created in the
image of God, and therefore if we cause them pain, in their unique different never-been-seen-before
ways of experience joy or pain, if we cause them pain we diminish the image of
God in the world. Whoof – now that’s a reason to care about how we treat our
fellow human beings.
And you, you just can’t treat
another human being as worth less than you, for any reason, and certainly not
based on their gender or sexuality or faith or skin colour, because they – just
as you – are equally in the image of the one God who transcends all this human pettiness.
Well that’s the old version of
the argument about the Klal Gadol B’Torah between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai. It
turns up in a Midrash called the Sifra which is around 1800 years old.
And then, this week, I came
across a new version of the argument, my thanks to Rabbi Sammy Rubin. And Rabbi
Sammy found it in something written by Rabbi Sacks, and Rabbi Sacks, found it
in a collection of teachings of great Rabbi of C16 Prague, Yehuda Low.[1]
In this new-to-me version of the argument
there’s another disputant, Shimon Ben Pazzi, who gets up and suggests a he’s
got an even greater Klal than Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai.
That takes a lot of guts – the bar
is set, already, pretty high.
But Shimon Ben Pazzi’s verse comes
from the Torah reading we read today – Parshat Pinhas, so, hold on to your
kippot – what’s he got?
אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ
אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין
הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃
You
shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at
twilight.
You’ve got to be kidding.
With a choice of Loving your neighbour
as yourself, and the creation of every human being in the image of God, Shimon
Ben Pazzi goes for
אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ
הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃
You shall offer one lamb in the
morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.
Give him a second. He’s on to
something.
This verse – Numbers 28:4 is a
call to service, a call to be prepared to make a sacrifice. Interestingly the
sacrifice is the daily sacrifice – the twice daily sacrifice. It’s not the
weekly Shabbat special offering or the in a while special festival offering. It’s
a command to show us and Lkarev – The Hebrew is usually translated as to
make a sacrifice, but really it means to come close, to turn up twice a day for
life.
And the more I think about it,
the more I think its brilliant.
Because I don’t really care if a
person do the right thing once. Anyone can be nice once. Shira, as amazingly as
you’ve done today, you’ve done it once. And the real test is – what you are you
going to do tomorrow?
And this thing that we are to do –
this lamb offering, it’s a sort of charitable gift, it’s pitched, right about
here; neither so incredibly complex that we could never hope to meet the
standard of our very very best effort, but nor is it a soft-option, something
that doesn’t pull in effort and attention.
It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent
of trying to do a good deed every morning and every evening. It’s the sort of
Jewish equivalent of getting up every morning and going to be every evening
saying the Shema, or making regular charitable contributions, or decisions to
keep pushing at the things we know we should be doing with our life, that can
feel a little repetitive or less immediately gratifying than, I don’t know,
Youtube or buying the latest plastic tat on Amazon.
What I think Shimon Ben Pazzi is
asking us is to try every morning and every evening to live up to the miracle
that is our life. He’s asking us to commit to try every morning and every
evening to live out our values and sense of who we want to be. Or perhaps more
precisely he’s saying that this level of commitment, this is the Klal Gadol
BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.
And that’s a big ask in a complex
time.
We live in a time where the
central organising principle of secular society is live your own best life – as
if self-centred immediate gratification isn’t, in fact the greatest danger we humans
pose to each other and the planet we live. We would be much better swapping
that principle for Rabbi Akiva’s loving your neighbour as you love yourself,
for Ben Azzai’s principle about the creation of every human being in the image
of God and certainly Shimon Ben Pazzi’s principle drawn from this week’s
Parasha of אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה
בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃.
Shabbat Shalom
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