Rabbi 360

There is a story in the Talmud (Kiddushin 39b) that has occupied a lot of my spiritual mindspace as of late, wanted to share it with you.

The story is about a bunch of rabbis—the Talmud, so that we can orient ourselves, is a text developed after the Bible, after the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, and codified and disseminated around the year 600 CE. It is essentially a compilation of conversations among rabbis about Jewish law, lore, and ethics arranged topically, though prone to tangent and aside—and oftentimes they will share a story to illustrate a point of Jewish practice or theology.

In this section of the Talmud, the rabbis relate a story of a parent who tells their child to climb up a ladder in order to collect chicks from a bird’s nest on the side of the building. The child climbs up, shoos away the mother bird, collects the chicks and then, upon descending the ladder, falls to the ground, and dies.

It is a horrible, horrible story. A tragic story. And in the Talmud it is told in the context of a rabbinic discussion of reward and punishment: that, in a basic theological understanding of the Talmudic rabbis, those who do good and perform mitzvot should be rewarded, and those who sin and do not perform mitzvot should be punished. And yet here is a challenge to that premise, something that we are perhaps familiar with in the word of Rabbi Harold Kushner who passed away this past year, that bad things happen to good people. And all the more so in this case for the rabbis, when the victim is a child.

And this child was in the story fulfilling not one but two mitzvot. One, to honor your mother and father, and the other, to shoo away the mother bird before collecting fledglings or eggs. Now we can perhaps reflect on these acts as to why they are commandments, though the Torah doesn’t even provide a rationale. Honoring ones parents is a means to shalom bayit, peace in the home and respecting those who gave us life. Sending the mother bird away is a form of tza’ar baalei Chayim, of caring for animals, and is a way to instill compassion.

But that is too simple, and raises questions in and of themselves: how do we honor parents who were harmful and abusive, and maybe we shouldn’t even take the fledglings or eggs in the first place. But again, the Torah does not provide a reason.

What the Torah does provide, and this makes this case even more troubling for the rabbis, is a reward.  

In the Torah we read,

“Honor your father and your mother, as your God has commanded you, that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that your God is assigning to you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)

And then a little later in Deuteronomy (22:6):

“If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.”

So here are two positive commandments, and the only two in the Torah to have a specific reward attached to them, and that reward being long life. And here, is a story of a child, fulfilling both commandments at the same time, who died.

The rabbis in the Talmud therefore are troubled by this, an seek to find an explanation, a reason for this.

First, they posit that the story never happened, and therefore can’t be a valid theological experience. No, there was an eyewitness. Rabbi Ya’akov, a Talmudic scholar, witnessed the incident.

Ok, well if it definitely happened, the Talmud suggests, then the child must have been thinking sinful thoughts while they were performing these mitzvot. Again, no—the Talmud argues that people are not judged by their thoughts, only by their actions.

Ok, then, well maybe the child was not thinking any old sinful thoughts, but was specifically thinking about idol worship, one of the gravest sins of the Torah the thought of which is a sin. No, they say, the child was performing a mitzvah, and so should have been protected from thinking of idol worship.

Ok, then, a person is only protected on their way to doing a mitzvah, and since this child was on their way down on the ladder, and therefore already finished performing the mitzvah, he was susceptible to harm. No, they say, one is protected both on their way to perform a mitzvah and returning from performing a mitzvah.

Ok, so since this child should not have been harmed, what is the reason:

סוּלָּם רָעוּעַ הֲוָה, דִּקְבִיעַ הֶיזֵּיקָא, וְכׇל הֵיכָא דִּקְבִיעַ הֶיזֵּיקָא לָא סָמְכִינַן אַנִּיסָּא

This was the case of a rickety ladder that was dangerous to climb, and whenever there is danger, we can not rely on a miracle.

On the one hand, the rabbis are making the argument that yes, normally it is the good who are rewarded and the bad punished, but in this case, the ladder was not stable, it was broken, and risky to climb, and if something is a risk or dangerous, you can not expect to emerge safely, even if you are performing a mitzvah, even if you are doing good. It is a way, just like the first argument that the story never happened, to maintain their classic theology in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But what I think is being taught here is more subversive than that. For what I believe the rabbis to mean, or I will take them to read, is something more general, something more universal, a principle that does not apply just in this case but in all cases, and that is: our entire world is a rickety ladder, and dangerous, and we can not rely on a miracle to save us.

A Talmudic version perhaps of why bad things happen to good people.

Because they do. Because the world, indeed, is a rickety ladder, fraught, dangerous, irrational. We have known this, and perhaps over the past few years since the pandemic began, since the lockdowns, this has become all the more apparent. Not only have we seen a sweeping new illness, but we have also seen new and existing injustices given more visibility and prominence, economic disparities and the privileging of profit over people, personal struggles with mental illness and insecurity, climate dangers more apparent every season.

The world is a rickety ladder. And, as the text says, we can not rely on a miracle. We can not rely on God to save us.

The only ones we can rely on, therefore, are each other.

For there is another story in our tradition. A story that we tell and retell often. Its not a story like other stories, with, a setting, a plot, or a cast of characters. Indeed, the only character in this story is you. But it is a story that we tell often, and I’m sure you have read it or told it without even knowing it. Indeed, we just told it not that long ago.

The story is the story of the service, of our liturgy.

We might not realize it, but when we come to services, like tonight, but really any service on Shabbat or weekdays, we are telling a story. A story of values, of concerns, or hopes and of direction. A story that shows us a way of being in the world, a story that shows us how we can face a world of uncertainty, how we can climb that rickety ladder.

Its easy to think that when we come to services and pick up the siddur, that it is a collection of disconnected prayers and readings and songs. But as a whole, the siddur takes us to a place. The siddur is a story book.

When we begin our formal service we are reciting the barechu, the call to prayer, we rise in body or spirit and we bow and we recite this call and response. That is the opening, the centering, for what comes next. The “Once upon a time” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.”

We then offer three prayers of acknowledgement and gratitude. The texts are slightly different in the evening and morning service, so I will use the evening service as a reference, especially since we are here in an evening service. We recite maariv aravim, which is a prayer about our relationship with the world, with nature; there is ahavat olam, which is a prayer about our relationship with each other; and there is mi chamocha, which is a prayer about our relationship with the future.

In its simplest form, the story is telling us that we are part of this natural world, that we find our place in the natural world through our relationships, and with that knowledge, we have the ability to change the world.

First our relationship with the world. We are of this world, part of the vastness of creation. And what is the nature of creation? Chaos.

In the Torah, in the beginning, we have a description of Creation. And this is not a scientific telling, but a value and that the Torah teaches not that the world was created ex nihilo, out of nothing, but that there was preexisting matter—tohu v’vohu—formless and void, and it was through a process of imposing order on the chaos that the world came to be.

And even though we read of an orderly world being formed out of that chaos, we need to remember and recognize that the foundation of the world is chaos. And that we are always trying to maintain some semblance of order. And even though we try, often successfully, to contain the chaos, we recognize that there is a lot we still can’t control. Even though we try to mitigate danger, we can not protect ourselves from everything. I learned that when I had meningitis. We all learned that and continue to learn that as we go through covid.

So we must accept the coexistence of order and chaos, and understand that the Torah teaches that the order of Creation came about in two main ways, two ways that we can emulate (since we are taught we are made in God’s image): one through God’s actions, in other words, by approaching the world as sacred, and holy, and greater, and worthy; and two, through developing and maintaining our relationships with one another.

The last act of creation was that of humans. And in this story God didn’t create binaries, God created relationships. And that’s second part of the story of our prayerbook, the second prayer of acknowledgment and gratitude, ahavat olam, that we find our place amidst the chaos through love and relationship.

One of the difficult things of the lockdown is that we were told to separate, that survival meant separation. Which is antithetical to being human. So we found different and creative ways of connecting. And indeed we are still trying to figure out the right ways to connect and be with one another.

This connection is so important. We continue to learn about another epidemic, the epidemic of loneliness, and how loneliness can have adverse effects on our mental and physical health. It seems to me, especially since the pandemic began, that we are harsher with one another, approaching others with anger, shame, and suspicion. We are easy to cast blame, to tweet ad hominem attacks, sew distrust.

But we can not face the rickety ladder of this world without recommitting to our relationships.

How do we do this? It means having compassion for one another, recognizing that we are all struggling in our own way. It means living into the Jewish value of dan l’chaf zechut, or giving the benefit of the doubt, of presuming the best intentions and innate goodness of others, especially those you disagree with. It means sharing and hearing each others stories. It means not ghosting. It means communication and healthy boundaries. It means committing to communities like this one where we can share our pain and our joys, teach and learn, make mistakes and be forgiven.

We need to know that we are not alone in this world, and give others the privilege of knowing the same.

And when we find our place in this chaotic world through our relationships, we are then able to transform it. This is the third part of the story of our prayerbook, the third prayer of acknowledgment and gratitude—our relationship with the future. A story redemption, or change, or transformation. Built around the biblical story of the Exodus, when the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds and broke out into song, we sing those same words, the mi chamocha, in celebration of the sacred power we have to change. The Israelites walked out of Egypt as a group, bound by their relationships with one another and with their world. It was this that allowed them to move forward and change their future. So to do we, walk forward together, bound by our relationships, to change our future.

This is the answer to the rickety ladder. We are in this world, but we are not alone. We can not be alone. We are made more secure in this world by knowing we have others who love us, and who we love. And when that love is shared, we are each then able to face this dangerous world we live in. And when we face it together, we can change each other by sharing our selves and our experiences, and we can change the world by joining together our energy and power.

So lets share our love. Let us look our for each other, notice  each other, ask after each other, love each other.

The Talmud tells a story. That the world is fraught, unpredictable, and dangerous. We know this to be true. That it is a rickety ladder upon which we must climb with caution.

And the prayerbook also tells a story. That creation is vast and chaotic, that we find our place within it though our relationships, and it is thorough our relationships that we are able to be transformed and transform the world. And this is the story that we tell every day when we pick up the prayerbook.

The world is a rickety ladder, the rabbis teach. and we can not rely on miracles. Ok then. So, let’s rely on each other. Then we will create our own miracles.