Robert Frost and Revelation

Revelation by Robert Frost

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

I think we are done, don’t you, with the question of whether this is, or is not, the letter by letter, word, by word record of some divine dictation.

Long done.

There’s a lovely passage comment in the Talmud Yerushalmi that imagines Moses taking dictation from God on top of Sinai, writing away in black fire on a scroll of white fire, when, sweating from the heat of the fiery letters he mops his brow on his sleeve and some of the fiery ink rubs off on his forehead – and that is why the Torah speaks of Moses having horns of light – carnei or.

The sort of thing pictured by ... well everyone.

This is Jose de Rivera’s image

But this tale of the fiery quill isn’t meant to be taken literally.

It’s a poetic image.

And revelation is always going to come down to a matter of poetry

Light words that tease and flout ...

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire

The greatest problem I have with the notion that this, all this, represents some letter by letter record of Divine dictation is not based on Biblical archaeology or Ancient Semitic philology or Higher or Lower literary Biblical criticism or fossil records or astral physics or anything like that.

The greatest problem I have with the notion that all this represents some letter by letter record of Divine dictation is theological. If the will of god, revealed to humanity, ultimately boils down to a bunch of letters placed in order, then the will of God ceases to be something infinite, touching the heavens, beyond human ken, and becomes instead something ultimately two-dimensional and all too simple for a true encapsulation of what is willed for our existence.

It’s more than the sort of theological problem that should be filed with the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. People die because other people think that the will of God is really encapsulated in a series of letters so that they can claim some kind of monopoly on an understanding of God’s will. They think they can know what God wants and it’s at that point that other people start getting excluded from being important in God’s eyes. Other people end up getting hurt, excluded, killed even.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

‘Tis pity indeed if we make the mistake of thinking that God’s will is capable of being trapped by printing presses, ink scrawls of pixellated imagery. Revelation is poetic, not literal speech.

I know the letters, in the order in which they fall, are capable of revealing the most extraordinary truths about the nature of human existence. I love the stories; I live my life by these stories, and the commands and all of it. But that’s not because of the precise letter by letter nature of how these verses appear in the good book. It’s because of the way the letters open up something that is beyond the letters themselves. It’s not that the letters are the product of revelation, they are the symbol pointing to the reality of revelation; a reality that can never be pinned down, like a lepidopterist’s butterfly.

This is Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘ The nature of revelation is something words cannot spell, which human language will never be able to portray. In speaking about revelation, the more descriptive the term, the less adequate the description.’[1]

In other words if you make a point about something being literally revelatory, you fail to understand what revelation actually is – it’s beyond.

So therefore we are all, seeking after that which is beyond all letters. And the role of the letters becomes not encapsulating the will of God, but pointing instead at that which is beyond all letters.

To put it another way, in the words of the very Sidra we read today.

Vchol ha’am roim et hakalot – ‘All the people saw the thunder’

That’s impossible, of course, or rather it requires a blending, a bending, of sensory perceptions.

It becomes poetically possible as it is literally impossible.

Is this a little highfalutin, I’m sorry. But this is important. This is who we are, as a faithful, non-fundamentalist community.

Maimonides[2] puts it like this.

We believe that the Torah has reached Moses from God in a manner which is described in Torah figuratively by the term ‘word’, but nobody has ever known how that took place except Moses to whom that word reached.

Those words – the words that were heard on Sinai are not the same kinds of words I’m using today. That revelation is quite unlike anything I can articulate.

Or another Midrash. There is a tale of the way in which the letters of the Ten Commandments were carved into the Shnei Luchot – the two tablets Moses brought down from the mountain.

Rabbis hold that the carving went right through the stones and that it didn’t matter whether you looked one way on or the other way on at the letters

They still read the same way.

In other words they were nothing like the largely non-symmetircal letters we now know.

In other words it wasn’t written in the sort of letters we would consider letters.

One last example, my favourite.

From the  C19 Hasidic Rebbe, Naftali Tzvi Horotvitz of Rophshitz.[3]

What was heard on Sinai? Asks the Rophshitzer, ‘The sound of the first letter of the first of the Ten Commandments.’ Now that’s terrific. The first letter of the Ten Commandments is an Aleph. It doesn’t have a sound.

Or rather, maybe, it is the sound of a letter before there is noise, the sound that encapsulates all possibility of future sound, it’s the aural equivalent of a microdot in which contains all possible written information.

I’m trying to articulate an ambivalence, in the strict sense of the word – a simultaneous tug in two different directions – or valences.

On the one hand every revelatory text, every purported experience of revelation has to be tugged back down to its proper earthly station. By the time we, humans, are speaking about revelation it’s already gone.

On the other hand every text, every experience that point beyond itself towards something unknowable has to be cherished. These texts serve as pointers, a roadmap towards that which is beyond.

And the more these texts become used in this way, the more carefully and more profoundly their spiritual core is unpacked and used, in turn to point ever higher, the more important they become. They serve like spiritual ladders pointing away into the heavens. You climb them not to get to the top, but to be one who climbs, one who seeks out the heavens.

From the perspective of the heavens revelation works in the opposite way.

There is, somehow, some need of the Divine to disclose, to reach down, to share with us puny humans.

But as the information arrives it is whisked away, less we should find ourselves carrying too great a burden for our fragile human minds.

Those who claim to understand too precisely the will of God are dangerous, to themselves and others.

Frost again,

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

Are you still with me?

I know you don’t believe in the literal letter by letter version of revelation.

My hope, in giving this sermon is that you are with me in making two other claims.

I hope you don’t believe that what I’ve been trying to articulate is less profound, a sort of ortho-lite pseudo-faith. It’s not. It’s stronger and more holy than fundamentalism. It’s the very nature of what Jews, the most spiritually refined of Jews in any event, have felt about revelation and the letter by letter nature of this book.

I hope, equally, that you can feel, even if only on those fleeting moments, that there is something which is beyond, there is something all these letters and words point towards; not graspable, not capable of being turned into a plaything for humans to do their worse, but rather an invitation to turn towards the heavens and gaze on at the animating power of the Universe and the will for our existence.

Because a true Jewish sense of revelation exists in the middle of these two claims.

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

Shabbat shalom

---

[1] God in Search of Man 184-5

[2] Perek Helek Principle 8

[3] Zera Kodesh Shavuot

Parenting, God, Jethro ... And My Son

Here’s the best insight into parenthood I’ve found in these past thirteen years. It started one day when we were teaching Carmi how to ride a bike. It’s lasted pretty well, though it's receiving a reboot just now. But I’ll get to that.

Josephine and I were teaching Carmi to ride a bike and we went to Coram Fields. They have a big concrete area in front of the playground and our 4 year-old son was wobbling along, developing balance and confidence and slowly, he begins to scribe these circles around us. He still wobbled, but he hadn’t fallen - and the circles grew wider and wider until he set off on a loop around the perimeter of the playground and then, off he went, behind the pavilion at the far end - out of sight. And I remember jerking my head from the one side of the pavilion - the side behind which he had disappeared - to the other side of the pavilion - from which he would, surely, soon emerge. And in the seconds between him disappearing out of site and re-emerging triumphant and still upright, I had this insight. This was parenting.

You try, you help and you wait patiently hoping your son or your daughter is indeed getting it. And at a certain point, they head off behind the pavilion, wobbling and out of sight. And as a parent, you spin forward your gaze to the point where you hope they will emerge still upright, and you wait.

In that moment I prepared myself for this life of parenthood. That which I would hope to impart would change, and the thing that, on this day, was the pavilion in Coram Fields, would change. But that twin dynamic of helping, and then waiting to see if my efforts had resulted in a safe-upright child was the dynamic to which I pledged myself.

And as I’ve reflected on this model of parenting, I realised that it’s a model you can see in the opening moments of creation, and the model at play in the opening moments of this week’s Parasha. Maybe I learnt it from the Torah long before Carmi ever mounted a bicycle and hadn’t known.

Let me start with the Parasha.

We encounter Moses, this week, at the foothills of the Mountain doing his best to corral the people. Tricky business, corralling Jews. And his father in law, Yitro, arrives to help. Navol Tivol Gam Atah - You are wearing yourself out Moses, get some other people in here to provide leadership, delegate. Don’t try and solve every challenge yourself. Or Navol Tivol Gam Atah - you’ll wear out. The Rabbis spot something in the Hebrew phrasing; the word  ‘Gam’ meaning ‘also.’ Super-literally we should translate Navol Tivol Gam Atah - as ‘You will also wear out.’ ‘Also?’

Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer[1] want to know who is the also, aside from Moses, who is going to be worn out? They suggest Aharon is going to get worn out and his sons, and the 70 leaders of the tribes, and even the people themselves - everyone gets worn out if the person in charge takes too much on. It’s such an interesting spot; if you try and take on too much it’s not only you who gets worn out, but everyone around you, even the very people you are looking to take care of, get worn out by a leader who tries to do too much themselves and doesn’t delegate.

It’s a great model for a parent trying to teach a child anything. Don’t try and be everything for your child, Navol Tivol Gam Atah you’ll wear yourself out and - Gam - you’ll wear the child out also. You need to let go. You need other people but also, perhaps most of all, you just need to stand back, and let your child cycle round the back of the pavilion. Don’t wear yourself out Gam Atah.

It’s good advice, but, not quite all the way there, yet. The point of Yitro’s advice to Moses seems to be merely that other people can do the things he could do, without bothering him. The aim of the advice seems to be the creation of a perfect replica of Moses’ capacity without Moses having to do it all himself. Now that’s not bad. In parenting terms, the aim of the game would be that Carmi learns to cycle the way I can cycle. Or that if I partner with a school with teachers who teach the A, B C or the three times table, Carmi learns the A, B, C and the three times table. There’s a bit more socialisation, other people get stimulated and I don’t get worn out trying to do too much.

All of that is good. But it’s not enough. And to understand why you need to go back to the Garden of Eden.

When God places the first humans in the Garden of Eden, they have everything they could possibly want. God - and here Michael from the first series of The Good Place will serve as a perfect model - couldn’t be prouder of Gan Eden, the Good Place created for these humans -

Vayar Elohim Et Kol Asher Asah vTov Meod - And God looked at everything God had made, and it was very good.

What could possibly go wrong?

When Adam and Eve do the one thing they are commanded not to do - when they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God laments - the Midrash tells us - Mikonen Alav[2] God wailed for Adam - Hein Adam hayah c’echad mimenu - That hein is an Oy. Oy, so close.

Let me put it in language Carmi, I’m so sorry, almost certainly you are only going to understand into your capacious future. It’s like a young person full of love who wants to be in a relationship with another person and gives this other person everything they imagine this other person could possibly want. In the language of The Good Place, every flavour of frozen yoghurt is provided. The only problem is the other person doesn’t want someone else to choose their dessert for them. They want to choose their own dessert.

So the other person wanders off, and the lover can’t understand why their beloved isn’t interested, and the lover wails, Hein look at all the frozen yoghurt! And you still aren’t interested in me?!

It takes God a long, long time to accept that being God requires something different than providing everything that their beloved could possibly want. There is a story in the Talmud,[3] almost two thousand years old, but still a long, long time after the stories we read today, where God gets involved in an argument between the same two Rabbis who helped us understand that 'Gam' word in the story of Jethro - Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua.

The content of the argument isn’t important. But Rabbi Eliezer argues one way, and everyone else argues the other. Rabbi Eliezer pleads to God to support up his position and God has Rabbi Eliezer’s back. A divine voice arrives in the study hall - ‘Why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer, he is right.’ And for a moment you think that this is going to go Rabbi Eliezer’s way. But it doesn’t. Rabbi Yehoshua tells God that God doesn’t get to play a role in the arguments between Rabbis. To do Torah properly, Rabbi Yehoshua says, ‘we don’t pay attention to a Divine Voice.’ God backs down and another reports at that moment that God said, Nitzchuni Banai, Nitzchuni Banai.

Usually the phrase Nitzchuni Banai is translated, ‘My children have defeated me.’ But the Hebrew term Netzach literally means - forever. ‘My children have forevered me. My children have outlasted me or surpassed me.’ It’s an extraordinary thing for a God - who exists beyond time, who existed before time and will exist after time - to say. How can God be outlasted or forevered?

It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve got it. I think Carmi, you’ve taught this to me. You haven’t learnt your BM portion like I would have done it. You’ve been taught, brilliantly, by Chazan Stephen Cotsen, but you haven’t even done your BM portion like Stephen would have done it. You’ve found a voice in your preparation for your BM that has is unique to your life, it’s a voice I couldn’t have dreamed of, let alone achieved.

Frankly, it was always going to be this way. Faced with a perfectly simple and straightforward option, my dear Carmi, you immediately seek out some route that I could never have seen. And sometimes, to my adult eyes, it seems pointlessly circuitous. But the point is, it’s your route. And on a day like today that experience of self-forging, of seeking out your own glorious ways of getting from A to B has stood you in a place where you can find things in your BM preparation that astound me. And I now understand this thing we say, about ‘becoming an adult’ differently, I understand parenthood differently. I even understand God differently and the very project of being a human. It’s about self-forging, it’s about transcending, outlasting and forevering the environment provided for a child.

And you’ve lit a beacon for that path today.

You’ve lit up a route that no other person in the history of humanity could have found or could ever find. - and that’s not just because you are extraordinary - though you are certainly extraordinary - it’s really because you are a child who is becoming an adult. And you’ve done this with your portion, and you’re doing it with your life.

The new thing I’ve learnt about parenting, Carmi, from watching and listening to you these past weeks, months and years, is that parenting isn’t about transferring, from me to you, the things I think are important in life. Certainly, parenting a Bar Mitzvah is no longer about how to cycle and the A, B and C, and the three times table. It’s about the space in which I can be surpassed, outlasted and forevered.

Like God, who is taught by Rabbi Yehoshua to be more than the jilted lover we meet in the Garden of Eden, you are teaching me growing up as a parent. And you, my dear son, your job is to keep looking for the roads I could never find and outlast me. Just as you have today. That’s the job for us all.

I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I don’t think, adult as both of us are, either of us is quite ready for the full-on detachment just yet. And more than that, it’s too much fun hanging out with you and witnessing your extraordinary journey.

But here’s my real prayer today - from this day onwards you should always know that my greatest joy is watching you find your own paths, and that my greatest wish for you is that you surpass me. And that when I’m old and grey - older and greyer - you’ll still want to hang out with me and light up my future with the light you spill onto the paths that only you can find.

---

[1] Mechilta ad loc

[2] BR 21 4 & 5 & 6

[3] BM 59b

A Bar Mitzvah Charge - On One Leg

May I be excused for a little self-indulgence this week? It’s my son’s Bar Mitzvah this Shabbat and it’s been on my mind. As many life cycle moments as I have experienced with the wonderful members of this wonderful community - and I am probably in the low thousands at this point - there is something about being a father of a child about to celebrate their Bar Mitzvah at the very Synagogue in which I celebrated my own Bar Mitzvah, and now serve as Rabbi, that has me astounded and humbled and excited.

It’s listening to Carmi practice the last part of the Kedushah for Musaf that really gets me. ‘LeDor vaDor’ - from one generation to another. In two words the liturgy captures the essence of being a Masorti Jew - a person engaged in passing on a gift and a tradition from the past into the future.

Here are three elements of our remarkable tradition for you Carmi; a story, a feeling and an observance.

In the creation narrative the first human - an Adam who is both man and woman at this point - is created in the image of God. It’s the most powerful idea I know, predating the rise of democracy, human rights and equality movements by thousands of years, and more powerful than any of them. To be a Jew is to see in each human being an animating force which is divine and to allow that sensibility to shape our every interaction with every human with whom we share this planet.

In this week’s parasha God tells Moses that the Children of Israel shall be a ‘Goy Kadosh,’ usually translated as a ‘Holy Nation.’ But the root ‘Kadosh’ really means ‘Other’ or ‘Beyond.’ In that line from this week’s Haftarah, God is praised as thrice-fold ‘Kadosh’. And the point of our Kedushah is that we are called to be distinctive in our faith and sense of peoplehood. We are not just another version of everyone else. There are times when our distinctiveness is purely a delight - 8 days of Chanukah!, but there are also times when our commitment to distinctiveness will be tested. There will be times not to do what we might at first flush wish to do, there will be barriers to immediate self-gratification that need to be erected and maintained to allow us to find our own distinct path of otherness. There will be some who won’t understand - don’t worry about it. The great goal of existence is not to long to be the just the same as anyone else; in fact quite the reverse.

And finally Shabbat - what a gift to a child coming of age in 5779. We live in a world that does not encourage us to commemorate that work should not empty each of the seven  days of the week - the reason for Shabbat given in this week’s Torah Reading. There are many ways to rest and I suppose one could eke out every second Tuesday and the alternate Thursday for watching 12 hours of Netflix. But Shabbat is our time, it’s a time for family and a time to step back and be re-souled by rituals and in ways that have been honed by our tradition for thousands of years; from one generation to the next.

That’s all the Torah - as Hillel said after a pithier attempt to pass on our tradition on one leg - the rest is commentary, now go learn.

Good luck Carmi, I’ll be in the front row, snuffling away into a tissue, more proud than I can possibly express.