The Burning Castle

I have always liked science fiction. Stories about advanced alien species and galactic empires have always captivated me. They speak to some of our deepest human yearnings. In using terms like 58th Century and Sixth Galactic Era, there is a acceptance that there is a future. Looking at the state of the world, I often have fantasies of a race of elder brothers and sisters descending to our planet in spaceships, and with wisdom, grace, and better technology guiding us to end warfare, violence, poverty and environmental destruction. Perhaps that is what really motivates those who scan the skies with radio telescopes in search of signals from far-off cosmic civilizations.

Life in the Fifty-Eighth Century.

In the Western calendar (or, to be honest, the Christian calendar) we entered this 21st century seven years ago. In the Jewish calendar, it is the year 5767, and we entered the 58th century sixty-seven years ago, in 1945. I think that the beginning of this Hebrew century marked a more significant breaking point than the year 2000. (Remember Y2K?)

Al Gore may or may not have invented the internet, but I will take credit for introducing the phrase “58th century” into Jewish discourse. How did I do it? Back when I was in rabbinical school, I collaborated with the president of our seminary, Rabbi Shohama Wiener, on the editing of a festschrift in honor of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, which was published by Jason Aaronson. I suggested the title, and it stuck. From there the phrase has, according to Google, turned up in many places.

The world was not the same after 5700/1945. At the outset of the 58th century, humanity brought about and witnessed Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Our idea of how God guides/guards/gods the world cannot be what is was until then.

In the Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah, Lech L’cha) we read: There was a story of a person who went from place to place, and saw a bira doleket, a castle in flames. He said, “Can this castle be without an owner?” The owner of the castle looked out and said, “I am the owner of this castle.” So to did Abraham wonder, “Could this world be without an owner?” The Holy One of Blessing looked out and said, “I am the Master of the World.”

A burning castle. The Hebrew word bira can also mean citadel, or capitol city. This rabbinic midrash makes sense against the backdrop of the destruction of the citadel of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans, which we remember during the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av.

The story is puzzling: God looks out from the castle, speaks forth from amid the flames, unmoved, unburned. And yet the castle keeps burning. The Midrash never says what becomes of the citadel. Is our world like a burning castle? Why does the castle keep burning? Why does God neither ask for help nor put out the fire? Abraham saw his world in flames— why does God not extinguish the fire, save creation?

Burning castles, worlds in flames. After the Shoah, I cannot believe in a God who will intervene to save the world directly. In the ashes of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, some philosophers declared that God is dead. They are partly right. What died in that time was a world in which we could believe that some force beyond ourselves would intervene directly to save us from the worst that humanity could inflict each other. If we are at all awake we are keenly aware that we have the technological power and moral depravity to destroy the world and that the only force that could prevent this is in human hands.

Not all of us are awake. Some of us have found that reality so terrifying that we have chosen to go back to sleep. I think this is in part what is behind the rise of “fundamentalism” in the world: a deep psychological need to withdraw into a worldview in which we are absolved from responsibility for our collective and individual actions, and place that burden on a “god” who like a good cosmic parent will break up our fights with our siblings and clean up our messes.

It would be so easy to conclude that there is no God in a world full of pain. Abraham’s faith was awakened by the anguish of living in a burning world, not by sweetness and bliss. The real challenge of faith is to believe in God’s presence even when we do not feel it.

This graffiti was found on the wall of a cellar in Cologne Germany, where Jews had hidden during the Shoah: “I believe in the sun even when it isn’t shining._
I believe in love even when I am alone._
I believe in God even when he is silent.”

I cannot believe in God the silent horrified onlooker of history. In the year 5767, the Midrash of the burning castle tells me not that God is powerless to save the world from our mistakes, but that God chooses not to do so. God chooses not to intervene because humanity can only fulfill our potential if we come to the right decisions ourselves. God’s purpose in creating humanity has been to give us the chance to use our collective free will to mature beyond our present destructive natures into the wise and gentle race of ‘elder brothers and sisters’ we now dream of in futuristic fantasy.

We can either save the world or destroy it.

Shalom

I am a little new to blogging. I hope to keep improving my blog as time goes on. In the meantime, enjoy the content.

Rabbi Russell Fox

Peaches

We have a peach tree in front of our house. Our peaches ripened last week. At least, they ripened enough for us to eat. As far as the birds were concerned, they began to ripen two weeks ago.

Since the peach tree comes with our house, it is easy to think of it as “our” tree, and its peaches as “our” peaches. The birds, however, recognize no such ownership. The other day I was sitting on our porch, looking out at the peach tree and the birds busily flying to and from the tree. One of the birds (and I confess that I do not know what species) was singing a beautiful and complex song as it flitted from branch to branch, pecking a peach here and a peach there. It repeated the same melody precisely, over and over. I imagined that this was the bird’s peach-song to its neighbors, that it communicated something like ‘Delicious peaches here! Delicious peaches here! Enough for everybody!’

I felt conflicted. Part of me wanted to shoo the birds, with their pecking beaks and their peach-songs, away from ‘our’ peaches. I had momentary fantasies of going out to buy some netting to put over the tree, to keep the birds out, or chaining a large ferocious dog to the trunk. But other thoughts (besides inertia and the knowledge that they would return as soon as I went inside) held me back from chasing the birds away. From where did the idea come that these peaches were any more mine than the birds’? What, in the grand scheme of the universe, gave me inherent right to this fruit? Did I pay for it? Did I manufacture it? Was I promised it by anyone? No! I did not own the peaches. They are just a small expression of the earth’s abundance, which happen to offer themselves in my vicinity. The Hebrew language expresses this outlook. You see, there is no verb in Hebrew corresponding to the English ‘to have.’ Possession is indicated by the expression yesh li, yesh lah, yesh lo, etc., which translates literally, to ‘there is to me/her/him…’ In the Hebrew mind, we do not own, things are with us.

With all the laboratories and factories in the world, I could not duplicate the experience of picking a fresh, ripe peach from the tree, still warm from the sun, and biting into its sweet, juicy flesh. (It is hard to get a decent peach-experience commercially. Most grocers do not seem to know that refrigeration ruins peaches.)

We can’t make a peach. It’s a humbling thought. We need ways to affirm that sense of having-been-given, of not-being-entitled-to. The Jewish tradition offers us a way to cultivate that quality. It is called a brachah, or blessing. Between when we pick the fruit from the tree and when we bite into it, there is a blessing. The specific blessing for peaches (held in your hand, orange and glowing from the sun on a warm July afternoon) is: Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, borey p’ri ha’etz. The blessing translates (more or less, as Hebrew translates about as well peaches refrigerate) to: ‘You are blessed, our Eternal God, who rules the universe, who created the fruit of the tree.’ A looser interpretation might be: ‘I acknowledge my debt and gratitude to forces infinitely larger than myself and far beyond my control for the gift of this fruit.’ A blessing is a way of reminding ourselves that what we eat, what we consume, what we have is not ‘ours’.

Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, calls one of the basic qualities by which God forms the world khesed, or which means kindness, grace, mercy, benevolence. It represents the quality of being infinitely giving, of endless generosity and abundance. Our peach tree was sort of like that this year. It was a good crop. Standing under the tree, I was amazed to see every branch fully laden and bent under the weight. As the peaches ripen, they attract the interest of passersby. Some will simply stop and help themselves to a peach or two. Some will knock on the door and ask if they may have some. One man even offered to buy our peaches. I told him they weren’t for sale but he could have a few. I have an easier time sharing them with people than with birds, I guess. Especially in a good year.

At our house the Picking of the Peaches is as much a part of the summer rhythm as Shavuot, the end of school, and the Paseo Arts Festival. The kids helped, Molly and Gershon enthusiastically climbing up and handing down peaches, setting aside the bad ones. When we were done, our kitchen counters were full of bowls and buckets of fruit. What to do with it all this abundance? No matter how delicious, one could only eat so many at a sitting. I suppose I shouldn’t say this, but I get tired of peaches after a few days. Some years, we bring bags of peaches to our neighbors out of— well neighborly generosity. It just seems to me that is what people do. We didn’t do that this year, as this year the peaches were soft and watery and would spoil quickly, and most of our neighbors were off for the fourth of July.

The counterpart to the Kabbalistic quality of khesed is gevurah, which means strength or rigor. This represents structure, limits, order, restriction or law. The child in us doesn’t like these qualities. But bounty needs containers. It is a basic law of the universe. Good containers in which to keep peaches are freezer bags and canning jars. We got to work peeling and cutting and putting up the peaches for some week in the future. When summer and sun is just a memory, we can open the jar and taste and remember the experience of picking, eating, and saving peaches from our very own tree.

But what am I saying? Our tree? Our peaches?? No. Yesh lanu– The fruit is with us. This is not just about peaches: If we take a deep look at our lives, at all that we own and possess and call ours, we ultimately have nothing. We are only given gifts for a while to use and share and enjoy and pass on. If we can empty our minds of the weight of entitlement, then the canning jar of life is never half full, but always overflowing with blessing.