Rabbi David Ackerman
|
David Ackerman is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, PA where he teaches Torah, plays guitar, and works with others to build up a sacred community rich in learning, spirituality and kindness. Educated at Princeton University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, David has served as Assistant Rabbi at Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, Rabbi at Tiferet Bet Israel in Blue Bell, PA, and as Rabbi for National Outreach at the JTS. David and Nomi Shapiro are the grateful parents of Josh (25), Elijah (21) and Rosie (13).
|
Vayetze 5778/2017
Kabbalah associates our ancestor Jacob with the sefirah (aspect/emanation of Divinity) called tiferet which bespeaks balance and harmony. Jacob, suggests the mystical tradition, synthesizes Abraham’s hesed - love/kindness - and Isaac’s din - judgment/rigor and embodies full and complete integration. Encountering the Jacob of Parashat Toldot, one can only scratch one’s head at the kabbalistic claim. Jacob? Harmony? Integration? Really? We are, after all, talking about the character who wangles the birthright from his brother Esau and then deceives his way into receiving his father Isaac’s primary blessing.
So how do we get from the Torah’s deceiver to the Kabbalah’s paragon of balance? I ask not as a matter of intellectual history, though that is a pretty interesting story, but rather with an eye toward the flow of our lives as flawed and imperfect human beings. The journey from the Jacob of Genesis to the Jacob of the Zohar is also, I wish to suggest, the trajectory of a thoughtful life, undertaken with mindfulness and awareness.
The essential verse contains Jacob’s words directed to his mother Rebekah who is plotting and engineering the deception which will yield up Isaac’s blessing. “But my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am smooth-skinned. If my father touches me, I shall appear to him as a trickster (k’metateia) and bring upon myself a curse, not a blessing.” Notice the focus of Jacob’s concern; he doesn’t want his father to see him as a trickster. It’s a long way from here to integrity and transparency! The key word in our verse - metateia - is an unusual one. It appears only two or three times in the Hebrew Bible and not much more frequently in rabbinic writing. What exactly is a metateia?
One Midrash (Midrash Mishlei 10:17) quotes R. Alexandri: “Any disciple of the sages who abandons the words of Torah is considered as though he were mocking/trifling (metateia) with the One who spoke and the world came into being.” Aviva Zornberg offers up a powerful commentary on the claim made by the Midrash.
“To neglect that which is most essential to one’s authentic being - in this case, the responsibility of the scholar to his text - is a criminal act of not taking God seriously. The notion of metateia, therefore, is implicated in the question of gravity, of the ‘heaviness,’ the seriousness of being. To jest with this, to play with one’s voice, is to disrupt one’s access to God-in-the-world. It is to be guilt of a kind of frivolity that dissociates one from others, from continuities and larger purposes. ‘To thine own self be true,’ pontificates Polonius, ‘…Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ To abandon one’s individuated selfhood, to trifle with the voices of others, is ultimately to undermine not only the differences, but the connections, between people.” [Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p 150]
Jacob’s search, then, is the quest for authenticity and individuation. It is, for him, and for each of us, the journey of a lifetime. Integrity isn’t achieved overnight or in one fell swoop. Rather balance and harmony are the result of constant effort and continual growth. Kabbalah shows us the endpoint of that process while the Torah describes the beginning. With mindful hard work and commitment, Jacob the trickster can grow to become Tiferet Israel - the fully integrated and whole Beauty of Israel, the aspect of God through which all Divine energy and blessing flows. Jacob to Israel; deceit to integrity; dissociation to wholeness - that’s the quest. Happy travels! And Shabbat Shalom.
So how do we get from the Torah’s deceiver to the Kabbalah’s paragon of balance? I ask not as a matter of intellectual history, though that is a pretty interesting story, but rather with an eye toward the flow of our lives as flawed and imperfect human beings. The journey from the Jacob of Genesis to the Jacob of the Zohar is also, I wish to suggest, the trajectory of a thoughtful life, undertaken with mindfulness and awareness.
The essential verse contains Jacob’s words directed to his mother Rebekah who is plotting and engineering the deception which will yield up Isaac’s blessing. “But my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am smooth-skinned. If my father touches me, I shall appear to him as a trickster (k’metateia) and bring upon myself a curse, not a blessing.” Notice the focus of Jacob’s concern; he doesn’t want his father to see him as a trickster. It’s a long way from here to integrity and transparency! The key word in our verse - metateia - is an unusual one. It appears only two or three times in the Hebrew Bible and not much more frequently in rabbinic writing. What exactly is a metateia?
One Midrash (Midrash Mishlei 10:17) quotes R. Alexandri: “Any disciple of the sages who abandons the words of Torah is considered as though he were mocking/trifling (metateia) with the One who spoke and the world came into being.” Aviva Zornberg offers up a powerful commentary on the claim made by the Midrash.
“To neglect that which is most essential to one’s authentic being - in this case, the responsibility of the scholar to his text - is a criminal act of not taking God seriously. The notion of metateia, therefore, is implicated in the question of gravity, of the ‘heaviness,’ the seriousness of being. To jest with this, to play with one’s voice, is to disrupt one’s access to God-in-the-world. It is to be guilt of a kind of frivolity that dissociates one from others, from continuities and larger purposes. ‘To thine own self be true,’ pontificates Polonius, ‘…Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ To abandon one’s individuated selfhood, to trifle with the voices of others, is ultimately to undermine not only the differences, but the connections, between people.” [Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p 150]
Jacob’s search, then, is the quest for authenticity and individuation. It is, for him, and for each of us, the journey of a lifetime. Integrity isn’t achieved overnight or in one fell swoop. Rather balance and harmony are the result of constant effort and continual growth. Kabbalah shows us the endpoint of that process while the Torah describes the beginning. With mindful hard work and commitment, Jacob the trickster can grow to become Tiferet Israel - the fully integrated and whole Beauty of Israel, the aspect of God through which all Divine energy and blessing flows. Jacob to Israel; deceit to integrity; dissociation to wholeness - that’s the quest. Happy travels! And Shabbat Shalom.