D'var Torah
Kislev/Tevet 5765
WHAT
I HAVE LEARNED FROM MADONNA
OR
What are you doing on Sunday, February 6, 2005?
While living in Canada, we met Masha [not her real name], a young widowed grandmother helping her divorced daughter to raise their daughter and granddaughter. Masha was not a superstitious woman, but just to make sure to ward off the evil eye, the ayin ha-ra, she would insert a red bendel, a strip of red ribbon into her daughter’s wallet, onto her granddaughter’s sweater, into various drawers throughout her house. Red, the color of blood, symbolizes life and vitality. For generations it has been part of standard Jewish folk belief, warding off the evil forces, offering protection to the willing and unwilling, to those who know and to those who are unaware. The red bendel seeks to order an often-disordered world. In an uncertain time, it offers the certainty of protection. The red bendel has come into its own outside of the Jewish community as the life-force makes itself manifest to those seeking deeper spiritual meaning, and the certainty that comes with knowing that one can control one’s environment.
In uncertain times, in a world characterized by rabid materialism, public sensuality and sexuality running wild, uncertain economic times, rampant individualism and fear of the unknown and unknowable, many folk turn to ancient verities, those truths that make the world more orderly. Striving to combat a world gone amuck, they seek the assurances and the certainty that comes from doing everything the way it needs to be done, to return to acts and actions that will return us to an easier, simpler, less complicated time. They find barriers and obstacles to be enemies worthy of attack; they demonize the other as they seek to find meaning and purposefulness in a world gone mad. They try to bring others over to their correct way of thinking and acting. They claim a monopoly on God and God’s protection, on what is right, and good and proper. This is no less effective than the red bendel.
Judaism
is predicated on the reality that there are no easy answers. There
are no simple rules to assure certainty and to assure a kinder, simpler,
more hospitable world. Judaism is founded on the knowledge that the world
is broken and needs to be repaired. It is in the process of repairing
the world, that we repair ourselves. Tikkun olam does lead to tikkun
atzmi. In the
process of making just the unjust, in correcting injustice and inequality
in the name of the God who commands us, and demands of us, to be partners
in the ongoing creation of a just society, the self can be healed and repaired. And
it is in invoking the name of God as the One who makes this demand of us
that we restore balance to the world. God is not on anyone’s
side. The Bible reminds us over and over again not to show favoritism. As
a concerned, loving parent, God would wish that each of his/her children
fulfill the expectations lovingly transmitted through text and tradition.
The certainty of purposefulness, meaning and a deepened spiritual life will
emerge from life lessons learned from our common Parent, wrapping and binding
ourselves in our Parent’s hopes
and expectations, joyfully transmitting and demonstrating them to others,
so that they, too, can be bound ever more tightly to making this world better.
Join us on Super Sunday morning for this year’s celebration of world-wide
wrap, as we bind the straps of the tefillin and the fringes of the tallis
around us, binding and reminding ourselves of our role, purpose and function
in this world.
Copyright © 2005, Barry A. Kenter