Thought for the Week

Shabbat Acharey-Mot/Kedoshim

Dear Members and Friends,

My son’s little black cat has finally tasted freedom. At night she sits by the front door looking at me longingly. Often, she will stand on her hind legs and stretch her front paws up against the door, miaowing to be let out. Here is where danger lurks – the road, urban foxes, the sound of a dog barking. Yet nothing seems to phase her as she scampers along the path, her furry blackness disappearing into the darkness and the jungle of bushes and shrubs in front of the terrace of houses.

Sometimes she pauses on the front step and lifts her head, listening to the birds who are nesting in the roof of a neighbouring house. The parents can be seen flying in and out through a small hole just below the guttering.

I am learning from the cat how to see and listen to the environment around me differently. She can be so still and so quiet, her little nose pointing in the air or brushing the ground, her ears pointed forward, her body alert, her almond-shaped eyes gleaming in the dark, her tail upright, its tip switching slightly. She can be earnest in her stillness, and joyful as she escapes into the night.

I am reminded of Rabbi Yochanan’s saying in the Talmud (bEruvin 100b), that even if the Torah had not been given, we would have learned modesty from the cat, that stealing is objectionable from the ant and forbidden relations from the dove.

And perhaps such customs would have been sufficient to keep us from lawlessness and unrighteous behaviour. Or perhaps not. In the Jewish calendar, we have just passed the mid-point of the counting of the Omer – the forty-nine-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, a journey that takes us from the first taste of freedom as we emerged from Egypt to the moment of revelation, responsibility, law and ethics.

So much more than modesty, honesty and sexual faithfulness is expected of us as Jews. We must be more than even the most naturally courteous of animals. We must be holy, as it states in this week’s parashah, ‘for I, the Eternal One your God am holy.’ Holiness is defined not as an abstract state of being – the separation of Israel from the nations in biblical terms, our consecration to God by means of the covenant – but holiness achieved through laws of justice, the repudiation of idolatry, the rights of the poor, honesty and fair courts of law, restraint in action and thought, and love – love of the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt, and love of our neighbour.

The content of revelation, wrote Franz Rosenzweig, is love and human beings’ awareness of that love. It is the divine call to each one of us to love the Eternal One our God with all our heart, with all our soul and all our might. Again, I am not sure this is an emotional magnetism and chemistry, but a passion ensuring our words and actions have integrity, that our unlimited appetites and hands do not spoil the beauty of the environment, that we bring our children into the world with love and say farewell to our dearest ones with love.

At the heart of this week’s parashah, indeed at the heart of the Torah is what my colleague Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah calls the ‘compelling commitment to love not only our neighbours, but also the stranger in our midst; to liberate the oppressed, protect the vulnerable, and support the fallen; to pursue justice and to seek peace; to participate in the great task of Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.’

And the ceaseless striving to fulfil this commitment is based on the love we have for ourselves – ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18). ‘As yourself’ – that is the hardest part: to live for ourselves, to love what is within and to embrace what is beyond our own small worlds.
 
Shabbat Shalom,
 
Alexandra Wright