Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 6 Cheshvan, 5784
Parsha Noah: (Genesis 6:9- 11:32) 
Seventh Portion: Genesis 11:1-11:32

Shabbat Shalom!

Today we have the story of Babel and the birth of Abram.  I wrote a lot previously on these passages.

Today, as we are on this journey together, let’s look at the Tower of Babel.  I think I have some fresh ideas on why it was such a problem.

As I have been exploring this new cycle, the idea of transformation has been salient.  It seems as if we are building a “recipe” so to speak (and it really can’t be a recipe – because in a sense we’d be creating a new tower of Babel) but at least things to consider on our journey:

• The Path of Ascension begins with curiosity and not judgement
• If someone’s curiosity causes doubt and defensiveness, be curious about our own doubt and defensiveness and NOT their motives for curiosity.
• The tree of life is within us. Choose life within with curiosity and not judgment
• Learn to balance the comfort of stumbling, with the challenge of pushing ourselves towards spiritual growth.
• Let go of a stable life. Freedom is accepting “what is” as a blessing. We can’t control what happens. We can only navigate it with bitterness or flow.

The tower of babel was the people building a monument of stability and consolidation.  They were not living out their purpose of being fruitful – multiplying – taking risks.  They wanted to build a solid and stable life.  A tower. Unification of everyone speaking the same language.

But Hashem had other plans. He wanted them to risk. To not consolidate.  To grow. Expand. The tower represented the OPPOSITE of their purpose and journey.

This morning I’ve been reading about family systems.  And the idea and concept at the fulcrum is the idea of “differentiation” – “the ability to think as an individual while staying meaningfully connected to others.” (From the Book “growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships” by Jenny Brown, Phd.)

This idea of “differentiation” describes the varying capacity each person has to balance their emotions and their intellect, and to balance their need to be attached with their need to be a separate self.

The tower of babel represents stunted growth. It made murky this idea of separate self and a part of community. Hashem knew this was not the path to freedom. Hashem wants us to be balanced – we are both individuals AND meaningfully connected to others.  This requires EXPANSION and not being bound or tied to others.  Freedom.  So let’s add to our learning:

• The Path of Ascension begins with curiosity and not judgement
• If someone’s curiosity causes doubt and defensiveness, be curious about our own doubt and defensiveness and NOT their motives for curiosity.
• The tree of life is within us. Choose life within with curiosity and not judgment
• Learn to balance the comfort of stumbling, with the challenge of pushing ourselves towards spiritual growth.
• Let go of a stable life. Freedom is accepting “what is” as a blessing. We can’t control what happens. We can only navigate it with bitterness or flow.
• Freedom requires balance – emotions vs intellect, humility vs confidence, thinking as an individual while staying meaningfully connected to others.
• Freedom comes from expansion and not contraction – but contraction is important to the process of expansion

The path to slavery is believing there is only one reality, and everyone’s reality must match ours. We have our own reality. AND our reality is interconnected with those around us – but the puzzle looks different.

Now let’s turn to the birth of Abram.

As I wrote about previously.  The Torah mentions this:

27And these are the generations of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran begot Lot.

28And Haran died during the lifetime of Terah his father in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees.

From the Tower of Babel to Haran’s death – there seemed to be expansion.  But then, Terah seemed to get stuck on Haran’s death which makes sense:

31And Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter in law, the wife of Abram his son, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan, and they came as far as Haran and settled there.

Life involves risk. And sometimes that means things don’t work out the way we desire. And sometimes that gets us stuck. And we are once again enslaved and imprisoned.

Because – staying meaningfully connected to others (like Terah was likely connected to Haran) means we run the risk of having our heart broken if something goes wrong beyond our control.

And yet we are called to risk.

I reflect on our descent to slavery in Egypt. I see the following pattern emerging:

• Adam and Chavah stuck and consolidating after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
• Cain stuck after murdering Abel.
• Noah stuck on the ark before Hashem tells him to go out.
• The people of Babel stuck focused on reaching Hashem
• Terah stuck because his child passed away

And. So far – we ALSO see expansion:

• Adam and Chavah expanding beyond the garden and physically expanding humanity
• Cain expanding beyond killing his brother and continuing to physically expand humanity
• Noah expanding beyond the ark and expanding humanity both physically and morally
• The people of Babel expanding beyond on the tower and expanding humanity geographically

I wonder what Terah’s role will be in expansion?

What are your thoughts as we conclude today’s portion and Parshah?

Here is my commentary from the past two years:

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 4 Heshvan, 5783

Shabbat Shalom!

Wow. I’m reading my post from a year ago. And I’m reading comments and it really resonates.

We just finished the Torah cycle – and read how the Torah doesn’t even get us to the promised land.

I’m thinking this go around how the fear of being scattered is connected to our fear of growth and adventure. Hashem doesn’t want us to stay in one place; he wants us to move; to grow; to develop.

Our spiritual journey shouldn’t be based on fear. It should be based on adventure. Going out. Because being “stuck” or “starting over” isn’t going backwards; it’s actually like building a new solid foundation on what we’ve already built.

Where are we “stuck” right now? What foundation could Hashem be building in our world? In our lives? That will be a launching pad for the next spiritual adventure we embark on. We don’t need to build a tower. We saw in the desert how they built a tabernacle. A place for Hashem to dwell. And – that place is mobile. Easily moved.

How can we be nimble in our spiritual growth?

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 3 Cheshvan, 5782

Torah (and because it’s Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh some bonus Haftorah) thoughts:

Today’s portion has two parts. First the Tower of Babel, and then the birth of Abram.

Part 1: The Tower of Babel story has always confounded me. It seemed cruel for Hashem to disperse the people and mess with their language. The people were unified. Why did Hashem break up their unity?

Rabbi Dov Baer Schneuri in the 19th century wrote (I’m paraphrasing here) about how the people’s greatest fear was being “scattered.” All the people gathered in one place (a valley in the land of Shinar) and settled there. They wanted to build the tower so they wouldn’t be scattered.

Rabbi Schneur points out the generation understood that Hashem’s blessings would always flow to a place of peace and harmony, so they figured by staying together, they would physically prosper. Their fear of being scattered meant they were worried about the flow of “easy” blessings from heaven would stop if they weren’t all together in unity. The key to this unity was the language they spoke; Hebrew. The holy tongue provided a powerful tool to keep themselves unified.

My thought;

Growing up, I was always told (maybe I wasn’t directly told but it’s what my childlike ears and brain heard) Hashem was “scared” the people would reach his levels so he scattered them (us) before they (we) could do so. It was to keep us away from Him. My takeaway as a kid was that Hashem did not want us to be close to Him. That we should stay at arms length. This was reinforced over the years. But I think it fundamentally misses what is going on.

However, as an adult, and rereading the Torah, I observe that the issue here is the humans at Babel weren’t living out their purpose. Hashem originally told them to be fruitful and multiply…so although they recognized Hashem’s unity, they were working against their design. They were consolidating. They weren’t spreading and scattering as Hashem wanted.

If they had remained in one place, Hashem likely knew that the strife would end up coming as they could no longer be contained and we would have needed to fight to stay. Hashem had big plans for how many people were going to be on the earth; we learn later when he tells Abram “as many as sand on the shore.” Had the humans in Babel stayed, it would NOT have been good or healthy. So he confused their language and spread them out. This was both loving and compassionate for their (our) future.

However. As Rabbi Menachem Nahum of Chernobyl in the 18th century points out; “Even after God ‘confused’ all the languages, something of the holy tongue remains in every language. Every language contains at least a few words of Torah. That is the inner reason why the Jewish people have been exiled among all the nations: to elevate, in the course of their discussions in the various languages, the holy letters of the Torah which became mixed in them.” This to me is a beautiful thought in line of theme of Hashem always leaving a remnant. There is always that tinge of hope even when things seem dark.

Part 2: the birth of Abram

It’s a short passage here, but we learn of Abram’s birth and how Terah took his son Abram, Lot (the son of Terah’s deceased son Haran), and Abram’s wife Sarai and began a journey from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.

We learn that they didn’t make it all the way. When they reached the land of Haran, they settled there. I wonder if that is because of the grief of Terah in losing his son. I don’t know for sure, but other than Abel, I’m not sure we read many children who died before their fathers until this time. There must have been a lot of grief. Enough for Terah to not complete his journey, because Terah died in Haran and never made it to Canaan.

Rabbi Moses Grunwald of Huszt from the 19th century writes; “it is relatively easy to EMBARK on a spiritual journey, the difficulty lies in COMPLETING it. Even ordinary people, of no special religious caliber, will often have an awakening, inspiring them to change radically; but somewhere along the line their spirits become stifled and their plans thwarted.” Rabbi Grunwald goes on to contrast Terah who had good intentions to get to the land of Canaan, but only “reached as far as Haran” and Abram, who persisted and completed his mission to journey to the land.

So this leaves me with some questions (where I don’t yet necessarily have the answers);

1. What spiritual journeys have I embarked on, but got stuck because of my trauma, grief, and junk from the past? Where I made early quick progress, but eventually got bogged down? How do I get “unstuck” in order to persist and complete my mission/journey?
2. Is there a difference between purpose, mission, calling, and journey?
3. Where (like the humans living in Babel) am I comfortable and unwilling to go and be fruitful and multiply?

Haftorah thoughts (from Isaiah 54:1-55:5)

Here we are getting to see the future. As Hashem spread people out in our Torah portion, this weeks Haftorah talks about gathering people in Jerusalem, so many people that Jerusalem expands.

One of my favorite lines (and also the most difficult to really accept) is this (Isaiah 54:4): “Do not fear another exile after the redemption. Do not be ashamed or embarrassed to proudly display your greatness, for fear that you may be exiled again, for you will not be disgraced with another exile.”

Do not be embarrassed or ashamed? Proudly display your greatness? My brain is yelling at me as I read that! “Of course you should be embarrassed and ashamed. Look at all you’ve done wrong! Look at how many bad decisions you’ve made! Look at how you’ve screwed up! There is no greatness to display!”

I don’t think I’m alone in this (please tell me I’m not alone in this!). Do we REALLY think ourselves great? Or do we think ourselves worthy of shame and embarrassment? As I posted earlier today. I am learning that I am not someone to be fixed; but I am someone to be loved and listened to. You are not someone to be fixed; you are someone to be loved and listened to.

This is so challenging. The inner conflict is great here.

And the next logical question is “why would Hashem think I’m great?” He answers this;

“For the name of your husband, who made you great, is the God of Hosts – so who could possibly oppose you? Isn’t your Redeemer none other than the Holy one of Israel, who will then be called ‘God of the entire Earth’ by all, so why be afraid?

The passage continues to show us how much Hashem loves us. All he has done for us. He may “hide his face for a short time” but all things he is doing point to how great we are! How great YOU are!

Comments:

I’m no expert but I feel like there’s a bunch of times in the Torah and in Jewish history where we set out on the journey and don’t quite make it to the promised land. And it makes me wonder if the arrival is the goal or the journey itself. Some of my favorite quotes are about starting the journey without actually finishing it. One I think is from the talmud, something about that we are not required to finish improving the world but worry also not afraid to abandon it. There’s also a wonderful JFK quote about how the work that needs to be done will not be done in the first hundred days or even in the four years of his administration. But he says let us begin. And I watch my 20-year-old clients struggle with the same issues that I am still struggling with 20 plus years later and I tell them that this is their life’s work, learning how to be well, how to improve relationships, and how has their life changes the journey and the challenges will change as well. Do we only complete our mission when we arrive at our goal? And does our mission end when we arrive at our goal?

I’ve been thinking today about your second question. I think that I have known my purpose from early adulthood, though it’s difficult to put into words. I always felt my purpose was to make the world a more just place and as I got older I began to recognize that I have experienced great privilege and that a lot has been invested in me by my community. I have also experienced great pain and again my community invested a lot in me as I healed. But it wasn’t always clear to me how to live that purpose and maybe that’s where the journey comes in. For a while I thought politics was the answer–my goal was to elect better leaders and to engage more people in the political process. Am I working politics left me with more questions and answers and then my goal shifted to become a political scientist so I could more fully understand, through research and teaching how to create a more just world. As I got to know myself better I realized this wasn’t the right role for my talents. And I spent a few years lost and experiencing more joy and more suffering. When I discovered social work it felt like a calling, but even then it’s been difficult to find my right place in that world. Or maybe I’m being too concrete and my calling is to bear witness of the healing of others, to share stories to ease the pain of others, to make mistakes and learn from them and guide others do the same. So much to ponder! Thanks for creating the space for the conversation.