A Bima-Ready D’var Torah Every Week
11 Tishrei 5780
Parashat Ha'azinu
"To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before"
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 32:1-52
Haftarah Portion: II Samuel 22:1-51
Shalom!
This week's Taste of Torah comes from our archives and was written by Rabbi Marshal Klaven.
After assigning an art project, an instructor briefly leaves his classroom to retrieve the paper he had forgotten in the supply closet. Upon his return, he noticed that one of his young pupils had not waited for the paper. Instead, this pupil had found another medium upon which to begin his masterpiece. “Michelangelo!” yelled the instructor. “Why did you paint on the wall?” The young Michelangelo replied: “Because it needed a little something. Don’t you think? I mean, the wall just seemed so empty.”
It is, after all, within our nature to create in, and in the case of Michelangelo, on the empty spaces of our lives. In this week’s Torah portion of Ha’azinu we begin to understand where this creative drive comes from as we read in Deuteronomy 32:10: “God found him (referring to Israel) in a desert region, in an empty place, a howling waste.” Although there appears to be very little that is extraordinary about this poetic verse from the English translation, the Hebrew contains a very rare and important Biblical word: tohu, meaning “empty.”
Modern commentator, Richard Elliot Friedman, notes: “This word has not occurred since its mention at the very beginning of Torah: ‘the earth had been empty (tohu) and unformed (v’vohu)’ (Gen. 1:2). Now,” continues Friedman, “Israel’s environment in the wilderness is pictured comparably to the condition of the universe prior to the acts of creation,” (Commentary on the Torah, p. 668). It is not a coincidence that tohu appears in the first and last portions read on regular Sabbaths. This word is written particularly in these two places, I speculate, to teach us that just as God began the Torah by creating the world from emptiness, we – at its end – must be similarly inspired, continuing God’s work of creation in the empty spaces in our lives.
I think it is fair to say that as a species we have pursued our Divine drive of creativity boldly, going, in the words of Star-Trek, “where no man (or woman) has gone before.” Interestingly, Dwayne Day from The Space Review points out that this fictional mission statement may have come from a real initiative to explore the emptiness of space (“Boldly Going: Star Trek and Spaceflight,” 2005). In a 1958 White House document, meant to garner support for a national space program in the wake of the Sputnik flight, it is written: there is “a compelling urge in man to explore and to discover; a thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before,” (“Introduction to Outer Space,” March 1958).
This statement is particularly true for the Jewish people, who – it may be argued – have disproportionately gone where no one has gone before. As Mark Twain put it, “If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people and his contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers… He could be vain of himself [for utilizing and filling in this emptiness], and be excused for it.” But, we do not entertain such vanity.
Or, at least we should not, for all of us have realized that our explorations, despite the best of intentions, have caused unforeseen consequences. Some of these consequences have been productive. For example, while making white wine at the end of the first millennium C.E., the Benedictine monks accidently created a carbonation process within the bottle. The unplanned result…champagne! Other consequences, admittedly, are down right tragic. For example, when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, his voyage initiated an enormous exchange (known as the Columbian Exchange) between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. While the exchange of plants and animals proved very helpful, it was the unforeseen and unseen transfer of communicable diseases which devastated the indigenous populations in America. It has been estimated that the ensuing epidemic of small pox alone may have killed up to 90% of some Native American societies.
At these moments, when our imaginative faculties get the better of our rational faculties, causing outcomes we fail to see, we may be inclined to go back to the drawing board and erase what was written. This impulse is understandable. After all, seeing that there may have been a mistake in the creation of human beings, even God attempts to wash the slate clean with a flood. We can hear the Divine’s frustration in Genesis:
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of people on earth could be, and how every plan devised by their minds was nothing but evil all the time. And, the Lord regretted having made human beings on the earth, and God’s heart was saddened. The Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the people whom I created – them together with beast, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them,’” (Gen. 6:5-7).
But as God understood, and as we all understand, the slate can never be totally wiped clean. Some dust always remains on the chalk board; some paint can never be completely removed from the wall.
And, that is not only okay. That is the point. For our faith teaches us in the book of Psalms that when these unforeseen consequences occur as a by-product of our creative pursuits we must “be ever mindful of them and not attempt to blot them out,” (Psalm 109:14). For these stains on our record, these indelible marks on our soul serve a purpose. They act as signs of caution, which if heeded, help us steer all our Divine drives, creativity included, towards more productive ends. For it is human to err and then be inclined to give up. It is all-together Divine to continue in the face of errors, as we learn from the mistakes of our past in order to create a better future.
Certainly Michelangelo understood this message well, for he did not give up on his ambitions in the face of the stern reprimand from his instructor. Instead, being ever mindful of the reproach, he found a more appropriate wall upon which to display his Divine creativity: the Sistine Chapel. May we, too, at this moment of introspection and reflection be human enough to realize we are not all-together perfect. We too have erred. Nonetheless, let us not give up on our dreams. For when we take our creativity and make it a reality we act divinely, bringing a measure of fulfillment and wholeness to the tohu, the emptiness, which remains in our world.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Aaron A. Rozovsky
Director of Rabbinical Services
© 2019 Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life
This week's Taste of Torah comes from our archives and was written by Rabbi Marshal Klaven.
After assigning an art project, an instructor briefly leaves his classroom to retrieve the paper he had forgotten in the supply closet. Upon his return, he noticed that one of his young pupils had not waited for the paper. Instead, this pupil had found another medium upon which to begin his masterpiece. “Michelangelo!” yelled the instructor. “Why did you paint on the wall?” The young Michelangelo replied: “Because it needed a little something. Don’t you think? I mean, the wall just seemed so empty.”
It is, after all, within our nature to create in, and in the case of Michelangelo, on the empty spaces of our lives. In this week’s Torah portion of Ha’azinu we begin to understand where this creative drive comes from as we read in Deuteronomy 32:10: “God found him (referring to Israel) in a desert region, in an empty place, a howling waste.” Although there appears to be very little that is extraordinary about this poetic verse from the English translation, the Hebrew contains a very rare and important Biblical word: tohu, meaning “empty.”
Modern commentator, Richard Elliot Friedman, notes: “This word has not occurred since its mention at the very beginning of Torah: ‘the earth had been empty (tohu) and unformed (v’vohu)’ (Gen. 1:2). Now,” continues Friedman, “Israel’s environment in the wilderness is pictured comparably to the condition of the universe prior to the acts of creation,” (Commentary on the Torah, p. 668). It is not a coincidence that tohu appears in the first and last portions read on regular Sabbaths. This word is written particularly in these two places, I speculate, to teach us that just as God began the Torah by creating the world from emptiness, we – at its end – must be similarly inspired, continuing God’s work of creation in the empty spaces in our lives.
I think it is fair to say that as a species we have pursued our Divine drive of creativity boldly, going, in the words of Star-Trek, “where no man (or woman) has gone before.” Interestingly, Dwayne Day from The Space Review points out that this fictional mission statement may have come from a real initiative to explore the emptiness of space (“Boldly Going: Star Trek and Spaceflight,” 2005). In a 1958 White House document, meant to garner support for a national space program in the wake of the Sputnik flight, it is written: there is “a compelling urge in man to explore and to discover; a thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before,” (“Introduction to Outer Space,” March 1958).
This statement is particularly true for the Jewish people, who – it may be argued – have disproportionately gone where no one has gone before. As Mark Twain put it, “If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people and his contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers… He could be vain of himself [for utilizing and filling in this emptiness], and be excused for it.” But, we do not entertain such vanity.
Or, at least we should not, for all of us have realized that our explorations, despite the best of intentions, have caused unforeseen consequences. Some of these consequences have been productive. For example, while making white wine at the end of the first millennium C.E., the Benedictine monks accidently created a carbonation process within the bottle. The unplanned result…champagne! Other consequences, admittedly, are down right tragic. For example, when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, his voyage initiated an enormous exchange (known as the Columbian Exchange) between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. While the exchange of plants and animals proved very helpful, it was the unforeseen and unseen transfer of communicable diseases which devastated the indigenous populations in America. It has been estimated that the ensuing epidemic of small pox alone may have killed up to 90% of some Native American societies.
At these moments, when our imaginative faculties get the better of our rational faculties, causing outcomes we fail to see, we may be inclined to go back to the drawing board and erase what was written. This impulse is understandable. After all, seeing that there may have been a mistake in the creation of human beings, even God attempts to wash the slate clean with a flood. We can hear the Divine’s frustration in Genesis:
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of people on earth could be, and how every plan devised by their minds was nothing but evil all the time. And, the Lord regretted having made human beings on the earth, and God’s heart was saddened. The Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the people whom I created – them together with beast, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them,’” (Gen. 6:5-7).
But as God understood, and as we all understand, the slate can never be totally wiped clean. Some dust always remains on the chalk board; some paint can never be completely removed from the wall.
And, that is not only okay. That is the point. For our faith teaches us in the book of Psalms that when these unforeseen consequences occur as a by-product of our creative pursuits we must “be ever mindful of them and not attempt to blot them out,” (Psalm 109:14). For these stains on our record, these indelible marks on our soul serve a purpose. They act as signs of caution, which if heeded, help us steer all our Divine drives, creativity included, towards more productive ends. For it is human to err and then be inclined to give up. It is all-together Divine to continue in the face of errors, as we learn from the mistakes of our past in order to create a better future.
Certainly Michelangelo understood this message well, for he did not give up on his ambitions in the face of the stern reprimand from his instructor. Instead, being ever mindful of the reproach, he found a more appropriate wall upon which to display his Divine creativity: the Sistine Chapel. May we, too, at this moment of introspection and reflection be human enough to realize we are not all-together perfect. We too have erred. Nonetheless, let us not give up on our dreams. For when we take our creativity and make it a reality we act divinely, bringing a measure of fulfillment and wholeness to the tohu, the emptiness, which remains in our world.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Aaron A. Rozovsky
Director of Rabbinical Services
© 2019 Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life
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