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D'var Torah February 4, 2005

Shabbat Mishpatim

Our theme tonight is Shmiya.

Hearing.

The hearing that arises with the soul's deepest calling, the hearing that overflows rational boundaries, and makes the heart leap forward no matter the peril or complexity that lies ahead.

I dedicate my words tonight to the healing of one of our members who heard and followed such a call, Marvin Naiman, who along with his amazing partner Margery Goldman, leapt at all costs into the miraculous yet perilous territory of heart transplant. Marvin is struggling to come back to life in the UCLA transplant hospital, but a new heart is beating in him due to his and Margery's unquenchable desire for life and because of a young stranger who died at the age of 20, granting Marvin the gift of life.

So let's listen to the words of Torah for this Shabbat and find the heartbeat within them as it comes through to each one of us.

Last Shabbat the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Utterances were heard at Mount Sinai; Even in the text you can feel the power of this experience vibrating as the Being behind all being reaches for the people and communicates the great Anochi, IAM. This psychedelic Sinai experience overwhelmed the people, caused them to push back from the blazing mountain, and cower from the thundering, fiery experience.

In this week's parshah, they relax: Moshe begins the process of unfurling the many laws emanating from those original Ten Commandments.

And there is a certain grounded joy that's come over the people. They are much happier with a hands-on, how-to approach. The laws bring the super human experience of Sinai to earth.

Mishpatim is very grounded:Laws governing injuries of neighbors, of animals, property, moral and ritual offenses.

Laws concerning the stranger and the poor, and the treatment of slaves.

Laws about sacred occasions, the Shmita or Sabbatical year, and the honesty of judges.

These are the laws that we live by; they help balance out the unknowable parts of life, and make the relationship with a transcendent God workable. They give us a way to go, Chalazae

VaYesaper l'Am et kol divrei YH-VH v'et kol ha'mishpatim,

Moshe comes and narrates to the people all the words of God and all the laws,

Vaya'an kol ha'am kol echad: And all the people answered with one voice:

Na'aseh! We will do it!

So a covenant is made, sacrifices offered, food and drink is shared, and the Sefer Habrit, the book of the covenant is read aloud to all the people.

But then the people are taken by a deeper enthusiasm and exclaim even more emphatically:

Kol asher diber Adonai: Na'aseh v'Nishma!

All that God has spoken, we will do and we will listen.

A peculiar line. What does it mean? And why so curiously out of order?

Shouldn't it be, first we shall listen and then we shall observe?

These two words have been pondered for centuries.

What follows is a few interpretations of this strange phrase and I want you to listen to them and see what phrases or sentiments fit your own life.

The 19^th century Chasidic commentary Sfat Emet , for one, is fascinated by the hearing component. We could have said, we'll do it and then we'll take a look at it, Why is hearing so important? He takes us into one specific law in the parshah about the slave who refuses to accept freedom after six years of slavery and chooses to stay a slave in the house of his master.

"If a slave declares: I love my master and do not wish to go free, the master takes him before God, stands him at the doorpost, and pierces his ear with an awl so that he may remain a slave for the rest of his life.

Why is the ear pierced and not the nose, the lip, (the bellybutton?) Because at the center of the Jewish enterprise is hearing. Our very mission statement as a people is to stay awake, to listen vigilantly to the ever changing communications from Spirit. At the inception of our people, we committed ourselves to go beyond the doing mode, beyond the basic requirements of goodness as commanded in the Torah. We committed to listening, to stay awake to further and further intimations of God's will. Nishma means: we are listening and will continue to listen and to respond AT ANY MOMENT to what you are revealing to us.

For this reason, the slave who chooses to stay a slave doesn't get high marks on the Jewish score card. The Torah is saying to all of us: When in life you get comfortable and happy with where you are, like the slave who doesn't really want to be freed, look out. When our work gets so familiar, and when familiarity and comfort start meaning more to us than our freedom, think again. Alas, it wasn't for comfort that Israel was created! The Sfat Emet declares, "Ours is not a destiny of slavish, robot like performance of prescribed acts, we made a covenant with Hashem to live a life of continuous passionate listening to Spirit and it unfolds in our lives. In the Torah, the slave who abdicates this freedom, albeit a difficult freedom, has committed an offense against this power of minute to minute "hearing." This is why his ear gets marked.

For the Sefat Emet, and for the 20^th century philosopher Emanual Levinas, static obedience misses the point. Both would say that our unique covenant with the Divine is the promise to keep laying ourselves open to new intimations of Hashem. Na'aseh: we will act on that which was already given to us. Nishma: and we will listen to that which is still coming down. The destiny of the Jewish people, the Sefat Emet claims, lies in our openness to the continual revelation of the not-yet revealed. Levinas said it this way that the Jewish people need to encounter the Divine at each moment in a way that "destroys and overflows the plastic image."

Or in the words of our contemporary teacher, Rabbi Irwin Kula, Judaism is the radical challenge to be constantly evolving ethically and spiritually. If you are satisfied with yourself and you've decided that the problem lies somewhere else, you have lost the connection. Lost the meaning of our legacy.

The rabbis of the Talmud tell us that Na'aseh vNishmah means a kind of crazy wisdom of Jumping in and then learning. This, they say, is extremely precious to God. What is hearing? Hearing is all about rational understanding and rational understanding normally precedes commitment. So when the people reversed the order to say Na'aseh vNishmah, it means that we leap first, then seek to listen and understand, it meant a total breakdown in linear logic.

In a beautiful image, the Talmud Shabbos tells us how precious this illogic was to God. So precious that at the declaration of Na'aseh vNishmah, 600,000 angels descended and placed two crowns on each head, one for doing and one for hearing.

The crowns over their heads decorated us for the illogic of love that jumps us into commitment without knowing how we will fulfill that commitment. Jumps us into action before we know what it will take to do the action.

Of course, in next week's parshah, we will find that our ancestors lost their awesome illogical faith and fell into fear, seizing upon old familiar behaviors, and safe images. In the Israelites' case it was the Golden Calf. And because they have fallen into fear, their double crowns are removed. But the Torah promises that they will be returned at a future Aimee we can live not from fear but from the radical commitment to encounter the Divine at each moment. To "destroy and overflow the plastic image."

God says to us: "Shema Yisrael, listen you God wrestlers!" And we say back: "Nishma!" We will listen, with the heart to the heart, we will overflow our rational boundaries, to live life by leaping forward before our logical minds can stop us and say, I'd better not.

(So when we hear of someone seizing the chance to live and not to die, to risk and not to go gentle into that good night, but to stand at the edge of life and leap, it takes your breath away.)

And because we are sending Marvin and Margery the power of our own leaping hearts tonight, along with all of the beloved friends to whom we send the healing power, I want to close with 2 brief stories about brave hearts and about listening.

Both are true.

A man who lives in Israel is in grave danger of dying due to kidney failure. He has been on dialysis but his kidneys are really giving out now..

His cousin, Mendel, is in agony because he knows through a match-up system, that he is one of only 2 people whose kidneys would even stand a chance of saving his life. Mendel is terribly conflicted...he loves his cousin and wants to help, but his wife is terrified. They have 3 small children. What if his own health were compromised? Then Mendel has a dream, a nightmare of his cousin suffering and dying. And he wakes up knowing that he simply cannot live with himself if his cousin were to die and he hadn't tried to help. So, he signs up for surgery, he shows up, doesn't tell his wife.

Fast Forward to recovery room. Waking up from anesthetic, he sees the anxious doctor standing over him...

How are you feeling?

I feel awful, how is my cousin?

Your cousin is fine, he got a new kidney, but it wasn't yours.

What?

The doctor explains: When we went in to take your right kidney, we discovered something that would never have been found had you not been opened up; it bypassed all of our screenings. The kidney we went in to

remove had a deadly form of renal cancer that cant be detected by camera. It is invariably fatal unless the kidney is removed immediately. You would not have had a chance had you not come in here to donate your kidneys to your cousin. Na'aseh v'Nishma.

The second story is also about transplant. A scene from real life. My friend Gaea received a heart about 8 years ago. Like Marvin, Gaea went through a huge ordeal to receive a new heart and then recover. Her heart had come from a 15 year old boy who had died in an accident, and during her recuperation, she didn't allow herself to feel the immense grief his family was feeling and the immense generosity they had offered. But finally the strange blend of gratitude and guilt got the better of her and she wrote a letter to his family. In their own agony, and grief, the family asked to meet with Gaea.

When they came together, there was much emotion. They had brought pictures of Christopher their son looking very happy and athletic and strong. Then the boy's mother approached Gaea and quietly asked:

Would you mind if I listened to my son's heart? Gaea nodded. And the boy's mother bent down to put her ear to Gaea's chest to listen and to hear.

There inside the ribs of a stranger, her son's heart lived on, beating vibrantly, nourishing and oxygenating and giving life to a woman whom he did not know.

At this place in the cycle of Torah it is ours to ask ourselves: Where in my life am I practicing Na'aseh vNishma? Where in my life am I offering myself, not from premeditated logic, but from the leaping of my heart?

What acts of crazy wisdom have earned me the twin crowns of Illogical love? And if none, what small or large act awaits me?

The words na'aseh v'nishmah in our covenant give us a kind of mandate: to put our ear to the heart of the world and feel the unbelievable possibilities that flow through us. These words are a mandate to live not the safe existence of the slave but the difficult freedom of life at the edge, where life meets death and the two explode into a different kind of wisdom, the crazy wisdom that God loves beyond all else.

May we learn from Marvin and Margery's moxy and their courage and may they and all of us who are ailing feel the leaping, loving power of our prayers tonight.

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