Eric Rosin
Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia
May 23, 2003 On Graduation and Ordination

So, I just flew in from Los Angeles and, boy, are my arms tired. No, I'm serious. I just flew in from LA. Earlier this week I spent twenty-one hours traveling to and from the west coast, including two lay-overs and one red-eye flight through Chicago, all in order to be in Los Angeles for about thirty hours. So my arms and my head and the rest of me, are all still recovering from the sleep deprivation, but it was well worth it.

You might be asking, why I would subject myself to such an arduous travel schedule? Well, there are really two answers: the first is that I'm not so bright. The second is that Monday night was the Ziegler School ordination in which my classmates and some of my closest friends were ordained as rabbis. The heads of the Rabbinic Assembly from Jerusalem, New York and Los Angeles all gathered to form a Beit Din, or rabbinic court to participate in a very moving ceremony at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles. I was privileged to present a very close friend to the Beit Din as a candidate for ordination and I'm happy to report that he was ordained. The other presenters were some of my own rabbis and professors, so being a presenter myself only one year after my own ordination was a strange and powerful experience. Of course, I couldn't help but think back one year and consider my experience of ordination last year.

I've received a few degrees and a few credentials in my time, but I can honestly say that ordination was the only credential that has been transformative. All graduations are liminal moments, moments of transition from one status to another, but ordination was the only time that really felt like my identity and my responsibilities were actually changing and for the better. My graduation from high school in Michigan was grand and full and pomp and circumstance, but it was also shortly after my prom, and as a result, I would say that I was less than completely conscious as our class speaker delivered his address. Besides, high school graduation is a transition to the unknown. There is no way to anticipate what it really means to leave home and start college with all of the unknown social, intellectual, political, philosophical and romantic awakenings that lie in wait. So I can't say that my high school graduation was transformative because I didn't know what I would be transformed into. My graduation from Yale was a rude expulsion from the nurturing world of the academy into the uncaring world where the search for meaning and truth have to be balanced with the necessity of paying bills and establishing a career. Our Alma Mater refers to our time at Yale as the â€oshortest, gladdest years of life.” Parting from my closest friends and marking the end of the shortest and gladdest years of my life was only a partially celebratory event. And again, I had the world of opportunity in front me, but I hadn't committed to any particular opportunity so I was not passing from college into anything definite. During my graduation from law school I was filled with a dull nausea when I realized that, after all of that pain and work, the only thing that I had accomplished was that I had become a lawyer. I didn't even attend the ceremonies to receive my master's degrees.

Ordination was different, though. It didn't just mark the end of my formal Jewish studies, in a real way that I had not experienced when I finished any other course of study, it was more of a beginning than an end. The charges from our Dean, Rabbi Brad Artson, the President of the University, Dr. Bob Wexler, and the President Emeritus of the University, Dr. David Lieber all of whom are tremendous scholars, rabbis and leaders, each emphasized the responsibilities and privileges of assuming a role which is defined by bringing our hearts, our minds, our souls and our bodies to the enterprise of making Torah relevant and central to the Jewish people. Being called a rabbi for the first time, it became clear that my work and my studies would no longer be devoted solely to my own quest for knowledge of God and truth, but from that point forward, my life would be dedicated to teaching and accompanying others on their own quests.

The difference between ordination and all of those other graduations was the way that the ordination defined everything that had gone before by defining what was to come next. While so much of rabbinic school had been dedicated to scholarship, I realized early on that I would never be the kind of scholar that my professors were. As we studied the depth of meaning and detail in Jewish practice, I learned that, in many ways, I would never be the Jew that I would ideally want to be. But on the evening of ordination, those perceived shortcomings were overshadowed by the realizations that I could be the rabbi that I want to be by continuing to be honest in my striving towards scholarship and Jewish practice, and by sharing my struggles with others to show how Torah is real in my life and how it can real in all of our lives. I have heard rabbis say alternatively that our job is to mediate Torah to the Jewish people, that our job is to live Torah as an example for the Jewish people, and that our job is to bring Torah to the Jewish people. The night of ordination clarified how we had been preparing for these jobs for the four or five years that preceded that night.

There is an old joke about JTS, the Conservative seminary in New York, which asks, what is the difference between the rabbinic students and the PhD students at JTS? The answer was that the rabbinic students become rabbis. In other words, in the days when JTS was more worried about turning out scholars than spiritual leaders, the institution insisted that it's ordainees undergo the rigorous academic training designed to train college professors in Judaic studies rather than less traditionally academic regimes that would produce pastoral counselors and spiritual advisors. I have many friends who were just ordained from JTS and I have worked with Rabbi Creditor for almost a year now, so I know that that this joke hasn't really been accurate for at least the last 30 years, nevertheless, I thought about this joke after my ordination and I had to conclude that I'll bet there has always been a difference between rabbinic students and PhD students because, even if they had read all of the same sources and taken all of the same classes, at the end of their programs, the rabbinic students were charged with preaching and teaching to the Jewish people, with ministering to them in times of joy and pain and with serving as a bridge between the Jewish people and the beauty and wisdom of our tradition. The. PhD students were charged with looking for intellectual puzzles and solving them. In both cases, the programs could have been the same, but the experiences were shaped by their conclusions.

And that's what I was thinking about when I read the parsha for this week. This Parsha, which is called B'Hukotai is the conclusion of the book of V'Yikra, or Leviticus. And just as ordination defined my rabbinic school career, the final Torah portion of each biblical book helps to define the text which precedes it. If you remember, the Book of Genesis, a book filled with stories of struggle and family strife, ended with the Joseph story, which boasted a deceptively positive ending. At the end of the Book of Genesis, the Jewish people find a false shelter from the regional famine within the Land of Egypt. The centuries of slavery which followed validate the trials and conflicts that our patriarchs and matriarchs endured, seemingly telling us that comfort and safety and flight towards easy answers are not always all they that are cracked up to be. The treachery of the new Pharaoh, who enslaved the Jews and imposed heavy burdens upon them, teaches us that there is some value in paying attention to our discomfort and our difficult relationships with each other and with God and not shrinking to safety and away from the struggle.

The Book of Shmot, or Exodus, tells the central stories of the Jewish people's relationship with God, namely the giving of the Torah and the Exodus from Egypt. Shmot ends with the building of the Mishkan, the tabernacle and the tent of meeting and with God crowding Moses out of the Holy of Holies. Near the end of the last parsha in Exodus we read, "When Moses had finished the work [of building the Mishkan] the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle." (Ex.40: 33-35) These verses illuminate all of the miraculous stories that have preceded them, demonstrating both the separation between man and God that is a prerequisite for divine relationship, and at the same time demonstrating God's preeminence over man in the all of the extraordinary events described within the book of the Exodus.

This week's parsha, at the end of the book of V'Yikra or Leviticus is enigmatic. It consists largely of a series of blessings and curses: blessings for those who accept and follow the mitzvot that have been enumerated in the book of Leviticus and curses for those who do not. The blessings are easy to read. For example, we gladly accept the Divine promise that, if we will adhere to the Torah, God "will give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross [our] land." (Lev 26: 6) The curses are harder to read. In fact tomorrow morning when you hear them chanted, you will notice that the tradition is to chant them as quickly and quietly as possible so as not to prolong the terrifying succession of threats that follow the general theme that, if we do not adhere to the mitzvot, God will spurn us and God will lay our cities in ruin and make our sanctuaries desolate. (Lev. 26:31)

What does this tell us about the text that has preceded it? The easiest reading is what is usually called a deuteronomic theology of reward and punishment. The book of Leviticus sets forth a large number of laws. A deuteronomic reading of the book says that if we're good (meaning that if we follow the mitzvot that we've been learning) good things will happen to us. If we're bad and ignore the mitzvot, bad things will happen. That's the deuteronomic paradigm.

The strengths of this theology are that it's logical, easy to understand and it helps us to predict how the world will function. The weaknesses are that it's untrue and obscene.

We know that that's not the way the world works. The rabbis puzzle over the fact that Tov v'rah lo, ra v'tov lo. Good things happen to bad people and unfortunately, bad things happen to good people. The deuteronomic interpretation denies this and asserts that all suffering and tragedy is deserved. If God controls everything, then God doles out pain as well as joy and God does not act capriciously. Therefore, according to this theology, suffering is evidence of being a bad person. Well, after visiting hospital rooms and comforting mourners, it's hard to even utter those words. Suffering, pain and mourning are part of the human condition and part of the human experience for good people and for bad people, and the beauty of our tradition lies in the comfort that it brings to those in pain and not in blaming them for their own discomfort.

So, where does this leave us? How can we understand a list of blessings and curses that seem so tied to our behavior? What does this tell us about the text that we have been reading up until now?

Rabbi Kushner who wrote the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People teaches that God is not an entity that doles out reward and punishment, but is rather the source of all order in the world who has established a world of predictable cause and effect in which certain conditions lead to disease or loss or suffering, but other conditions lead to joy and recovery and health and that the constancy of these rules is the manifestation of God's care and protection of us. This divine order provides us with the means to try and influence the world through scientific exploration and responsible behavior. Some call this dimunition of God's intervention in the world a form a heresy because it limits God's omnipotence. One of my professors in rabbinic school went so far as to call it antithetical to Judaism, but if it's heresy, it's a heresy I can live with. I'm much more comfortable thinking about a God who can accompany me through the pain inherent in the natural world than I am with thinking about a God who consciously causes people whom I love to suffer.

The Hasidic Rebbe known as Kedushat Levi provides us with a more introspective reading. He reminds us that between Pesach and Shavuot it is traditional to study a section of the Mishna called Pirke Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers. Pirke Avot are a set of short sayings that are easily studied and, in fact they are included in our Shabbat and Festival siddurim in Hebrew and English. Kedushat Levi dismisses the literal, deuteronomic, reward and punishment interpretation of this Torah portion and instead, he says that it simply supports the mishna from Pirke Avot that tells us that, mitzvah goraret mitzvah, va'aveyrah goraret aveyrah. Sh'schar mitzvah mitzvah, u'schar aveyrah aveyrah, that observance of one mitzvah leads to the observance of other mitzvoth and that the reward for a mitzvah is not worldly, tangible reward, but it is instead the opportunities to perform more mitzvot. He reads the verse from our Torah portion that says that if you perform good deeds that rain will fall (26:4) and says that the rain is not the end in and of itself, but only a means of growing more crops and performing the mitzvah of giving more tzedakah.

I think that the wisdom of this parsha incorporates both of these views, that of Rabbi Kushner and that of Kedushat Levi. The Torah Portion begins with the words, "Im b'hukotai tehcheylu, v'et mitzvotai tishm'ru v'asiytem otam, v'natati gishmeichem, b'itam v'natnah ha'aretz y'vulah v'eitz ha s'dei yitain piroh. If you follow my laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield it's produce and the trees of the field their fruit." First contrast this with the last words of the book of Exodus. We're no longer limiting our concern to the mishkan. We're talking about the entire natural world. At the end of Exodus, Moses was crowded out of God's presence. Here God's presence accompanies us in all of nature. God is inviting the entire Jewish people into a relationship and human actions are accorded a great deal of importance. This is much more reminiscent of the image that Heschel uses about Human beings and God working together. If we do our part by following the mitzvoth, then God will be able to do God's part and continue with the creation and the functioning of the world.

But more importantly, look at the fact that the phrase begins with the word, "Im, if." Beginning the Torah portion with the conditional statement that if we act one way then God will react in another way presupposes that we might not act that way. It assumes that we have free will. How does ending the book of Leviticus with a declaration of our free will help to define the chapters that have come before? Well, Rabbi Kushner might say that the laws in the book of Leviticus help to describe the order of the world as God has designed it. Kedushat Levi might say that the book of Leviticus is a catalog of mitzvot, the performance of any of which can lead to a profusion of mitzvot in our lives. Both, however, emphasize the human role in choosing to observe mitzvot.

In the same way that my ordination imbued everything that I had learned in rabbinic school with a sense of purpose, this week's parsha to remember all of the mitzvot that we have learned while reading the book of Leviticus and to actively choose to follow them. It with that sense of purpose that I wish all of you a Shabbat Shalom.