Such Torah and Such a Reward!(?)
D'var
Torah: Vayetzey
December 5, 2008
We learned a fascinating page of Talmud in our Adult Confirmation Class Tuesday evening. A week earlier, a member of the class asked why some letters in the Torah have crowns resting on them. The question led me to the Talmudic tractate Menachot page 29b. There we find an important Talmudic story that goes like this. When Moses ascended the mountain, he saw G-d affixing crowns to the top of some letters. Moses asks G-d why G-d is doing this. G-d responds that in years to come a great scholar, by the name of Akiba the son of Joseph will interpret heaps and heaps of laws from these crowns atop the letters. This Akiba is better known to us as Rabbi Akiba.
The Talmudic Rabbis were the original science fiction buffs. They have Moses asking G-d if he can see the classroom of Rabbi Akiba which is some 1,350 years in the future. G-d tells Moses to turn around and -poof - Moses is in the classroom of Rabbi Akiba. Moses is deeply impressed with the brilliance of this eminent scholar. Moses, as great as he was, couldn't quite follow the teachings of this great and beloved teacher. Moses asks G-d why did G-d give the Torah to Moses when there would be such a greater scholar in Rabbi Akiba. In an uncharacteristic response, G-d says, “Be silent, such is My decree.” In the Torah, when G-d is challenged by Abraham or Moses, G-d engages them in discussion. Not here, however. Actually G-d’s demand for silence foreshadows G-d’s response to Moses’s next question. Moses asks G-d to show him Akiba’s reward given he is such a brilliant and beloved teacher. In a second time machine, G-d shows Moses Rabbi Akiba in the year 135 still alive having his skin ripped off of him by the Romans during the Hadrianic persecution. Akiba is tortured and killed. We can hear and feel the anguish in the Rabbi’s souls as we again have Moses exclaiming (asking) “Lord of the universe, such Torah and such a reward!(?)”. G-d again responds to Moses “Be silent. Such is my decree.”
I love this story, not so much for G-d’s response but for the challenge the Rabbis pose to G-d in the voice of none other than Moses. How can such a great scholar, teacher and devoted servant as Rabbi Akiba, meet such a horribly gruesome end? The Rabbis challenge G-d. I’m not sure if the Rabbi’s are satisfied with G-d’s response or they find it lacking but there is no question of the challenge they pose.
Last week we saw absolute evil perpetrated against innocent people in Mumbai, India. We know nothing about most of the hundreds of people killed but we know something about the Rabbi and Rebetzin in the Chabad House, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Hertzberg. They lived a life that epitomized love and kindness. And what was their reward? They were slaughtered by men filled with hatred. We can’t help but echo the words of the Rabbis and Moses, Lord of the universe, “such Torah and such a reward!(?)”
Jacob leaves home in our Parsha after finagling the blessing from his father Isaac at the expense of his brother Esau. At the advice of his mother Rebecca, Jacob flees to escape Esau’s wrath and his expressed intention to follow in Cain’s footsteps. The first night Jacob journeys eastward, he has a dream seeing angels ascending and descending a ladder that stretched from earth to the heavens. When he awakens in the morning, Jacob proclaims “G-d is in this place and I did not know it.” How great are those moments when we can experience G-d’s presence.
Our problem is just the opposite, however. We witness events so horrible that we wonder whether G-d has absented G-dself from this place. Even more, some find themselves saying “G-d is not in this place and I know it.” Our sages of blessed memory themselves spoke about hastarat Panim - G-d hiding his presence. In the 1960s Rabbi Richard Rubenstein went even further. In the wake of the Holocaust, he and others spoke about the death of G-d.
Not the Chabad Hasidim however who accept the words “Such is My Decree.” They truly believe this is G-d’s decree and the just decree of a benevolent and loving G-d. I respect their faith in joy, in sorrow and in tragedy. Theirs is not mine, however.
My theology is more in line with the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner. Rabbi Kushner maintains that random bad things happen to good people totally outside of G-d’s control. G-d doesn’t determine who tumors strike. G-d doesn’t determine who is stricken with debilitating disease. G-d doesn’t direct deranged terrorists to strike here rather than there.
I much prefer those times which call for Jacob’s exclamation “G-d is in this place and I did not know it” rather than feeling G-d has absented G-dself from this place. Thankfully, random murder by ten madmen is an aberration to the otherwise orderliness, goodness, decency and beauty of the world. There is so much where we can say with Jacob “G-d is in this place and I did not know it.”
Ultimately, I believe it is the love and kindness of Rabbi and Rebetzin Hertzberg that will win out. There is a vacuum in our world today waiting to be filled. It will be filled either by hatred and evil or by love and kindness. We can help fill it with the love and kindness exemplified by the Hertzbergs.
With the Rabbis and with Moses we can exclaim and ask the question “such Torah and such a reward!(?)” And then we ourselves can provide the answer. The answer is not in our silence. It is in our expression of love and in our kindness and with that we can then say “G-d is in this place and I surely know it!
Shabbat Shalom,
