If someone were to ask you what you think the core values of the Torah are, would you be able to answer? Is that a question that has ever entered your mind?
As we enter this High Holy day period it is significant that we review our actions and resolve to make changes in our lives. Yet, how are we to know what needs to be fixed and how to fix it? Is it enough that we merely do what is right in our own eyes or is there another dimension of instruction that can provide us with a more sure-footed course for living?
One of the core messages of Torah is that we must think beyond our own needs to the needs of others. Holiness is about being able to see beyond oneself and about being able to recognize one’s responsibility to the people around us. Torah teaches us to channel our desires and to do what is seen as right and good in the eyes of G-d. We are instructed to rejoice as a community and to make sure that we include those in our midst who have not. We are not to ignore the needs of the widow nor the orphan. We are told that there are parameters and we have limitations for our actions because G-d has set them for us. Our wealth is to be seen as a vehicle for helping those in need. We are to show our belief in G-d through our actions and not by offering intellectual arguments about our beliefs.
The Torah also reminds us that we are to be part of a nation that will in essence do “work for G-d.” As a group we are to bring the concept of holiness to the world. You’ve heard it said in a different way. “ We are to bring light to other nations.” G-d told Abraham that He would make him into a great nation. That statement was not just a promise, it was a challenge! We were chosen to let it be known that if anyone mistreats other human beings they are mistreating G-d. Torah reminds us that we know what it was like to suffer by remembering our collective experience in Egypt. Just as G-d redeemed us from our suffering, we are to use redemptive actions everyday towards others. In other words, by living our lives according to G-d’s laws of tzedek and mishpat, justice and righteousness, we not only show our devotion to G-d, but we become a fountain from which others can learn.
So what does such a framework have to do with us? First, we need to recognize that the Torah opposes the view that life is all about me! That point of view is associated with idolatry. Just doing good in one’s own eyes isn’t a satisfactory answer from a Torah perspective. We have been given guidelines and instructions that not only link us to past generations of Jews, but will continue to link us to future generations and to G-d. We are part of a community that understands humankind can change the world, making it a better place. We don’t have to write our own roadmap in order to bring holiness into the world…but we do have to integrate the road map known as Torah into our everyday lives.
Rabbi Harold Kushner states this premise in another way. He wrote in his book WHO NEEDS G-D, “ As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either you affirm the existence of a G-d who stands for morality and makes moral demands of us, who built a law of truthfulness into His world even as He built in a law of gravity (so that if we violate either one, we suffer the consequences). Or else you give everyone the right to decide what is good and what is evil by his or her own lights, balancing the voice of one’s conscience against the voice of temptation and need, like some cartoon character with an angel whispering in one ear and a devil whispering n the other.”
During this High Holyday period we will be uttering prayers that concur with the idea that our decisions about how to act are taken seriously because there is a standard of good and evil that is set by G-d. We will be involved in services that actually point to a theology that says our behavior matters to G-d because G-d has set expectations for us and the rest of society. Those guidelines tell us how to relate to others and control our instincts that might lead us towards doing wrong. The beauty of Judaism is that it also recognizes that thousands of years of debate and discussion have added to our understanding of the text known as Torah. All we have to do is delve into those discussions as we face difficult ethical and moral decisions.
This year as part of our joint adult education classes with Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Lewis and I will be conducting two classes that will deal with this idea of how we understand the core messages of Torah. The first class will be a comparative Judaism theology class and the second will be about “modern innovations on old issues.” I hope you will join us as we wrestle with these very difficult ideas.
As we pray, study, and work together may we strive to bring holiness in the world by heeding the core messages of Torah during this coming year.
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