Adding Holiness to Our Lives through Mitzvot

I gave this sermon at Temple B’nai Shalom in Braintree, MA, 0n March 22, 2008. My conclusion: by introducing  observance of mitzvot in our lives, we elevate our lives with holiness and move beyond our animal selves to experience fully our true humanity. 

Eliot Spitzer, while he was serving as Governor of New York, a married man with three daughters, violated the Seventh Commandment. He committed adultery. He was married, and yet he had sex with another woman.

The story is even worse than that. Former Governor Spitzer, who resigned that office in disgrace last week, had been the Attorney General of New York. He is a highly intelligent and aggressive lawyer. While he was Attorney General, he actively prosecuted prostitution rings. He advocated an increased penalty for men who were the clients of prostitutes. As Governor, he signed into law just last November the statute that he had strongly supported. The new law quadrupled the penalties for men who use prostitutes. Then he, himself, was caught on a federal wiretap arranging for sex with a prostitute.

Our Torah portion today is Tzav, which means “command.” Eliot Spitzer disgraced himself and very likely destroyed his family and committed a number of crimes. He also violated the Seventh Commandment: “You shall not commit adultery."

This story is astonishing in itself. And then just a few days later, in a twist to the story that we would not believe if this were fiction, we have a public confession from Eliot Spitzer's successor, now the Governor of New York, David Paterson.

In a story dated March 19, just this past Wednesday, with the headline "New Governor and Wife Talk of Past Affairs," The New York Times reported as follows:

In an extraordinary news conference on his first full day on the job, Governor David A. Paterson acknowledged on Tuesday that he had had several extramarital relationships, including one with a state employee, but said he had done nothing illegal and had been faithful to his wife [pause] in recent years.

Mr. Paterson said: “I didn’t want to be compromised, I didn’t want to be blackmailed, I didn’t want to hesitate taking an action because the person on the other end might hurt me or my family.” He spoke during the tense and often awkward appearance with his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, at his side. “I just thought this was the time to come forward and reveal this.”

The news conference capped an astonishing 24 hours that began with Ms. Paterson holding the Bible as her husband was sworn in.

Just after the swearing-in, while Mr. Paterson’s supporters were still celebrating, the new administration was plunged into its first crisis, as a Daily News columnist inquired about a past affair and Mr. Paterson and his mostly untested advisers debated how to handle the matter.

The governor and his wife told the columnist that they had each strayed during the marriage.  Neither the governor nor his staff would specify when he stopped having the affairs, beyond saying several years ago.

“Several years ago, and there were a number of women,” Mr. Paterson said during the news conference. 

Former Governor Spitzer, and current Governor Paterson, and his wife, were following their animal urges when they engaged in adultery. They had sex with other partners even though they were married. They behaved in a way that actual animals behave.
  
Alice and I have noticed Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal for many years in our back yard, hanging out together around our bird feeder. Like cardinals generally, and like doves, eagles, geese, swans and other species, this male and female cardinal are mates for life. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mrs. Cardinal has always been faithful to Mr. Cardinal.

The fact that animals mate for life does not make them faithful to their life partners sexually. A recent article in the Science section of The New York Times carried the headline, "In Most Species, Faithfulness Is a Fantasy." The article reports research done by scientists that established widespread infidelity among animals, even those who mate for life. The article says:

Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests that as many 70 percent of the offspring of these life-long animal mating pairs were sired by somebody other than the resident male.

So these New York political leaders were behaving no better than animals. What I want to discuss is why we should not behave like them but instead should obey the commandments, and it’s not for the reasons you may be imagining.

Commandments are divided into two categories. There are the prohibitive commandments, the "Don't’s," the ones that say don't do this or don't do that. It's pretty easy to see why we should obey most of those. Most of them clearly reveal their ethical basis. They include such commandments as don't murder, don't steal, don't commit adultery. Any system of ethics prohibits such conduct.

But, in addition to the 365 "Don't’s," there are 248 “Do's”, 248 performative or positive commandments. We must keep kosher by eating only certain foods and not others. We must fast on Yom Kippur. We must remember and guard Shabbat by setting it aside as a day of rest.

Why should we follow these mitzvot? Do we, you and I today, believe that these are divine commands and that we therefore must obey them?

This is the question that Rabbi Harold Kushner has raised in a recent article in the journal "Conservative Judaism." He He answers the question with a resounding "No." And I agree with him.

 Rabbi Kushner's article is entitled "Conservative Judaism in an Age of Democracy." He argues that a system of Conservative Judaism in which Jews are told that they must follow mitzvot because God commanded them on Mount Sinai or because our rabbinic sages decreed them long ago is a system that is no longer viable. We live in an age of democracy and individualism. In this modern era, says Rabbi Kushner, we are free to make choices in all areas of our lives, including religious choices. We do not respond to commands and obligations. Rabbi Kushner says, "Most Americans would rank action based on personal choice and personal values higher than behavior based on unquestioning obedience. Do we, of all people, really admire the person who says, ‘I was following orders’?” I know I don’t.

Rabbi Kushner's challenge immediately raises another question. If he is right that we do not follow mitzvot because we feel that we are commanded by God or by tradition to do so, then why should we live our lives in accordance with the mitzvot? If we have a free choice to do a mitzvah or not do it, why should we do it? This is not a rhetorical question. It is a genuine question. What reason might motivate us to choose to do mitzvot?

I really like Rabbi Kushner's answer. He points out that the blessing associated with a mitzvah includes the phrase “asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav.” When we light Shabbat candles, we say, "Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.”

"Asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav" means "Who sanctifies us by Your commandments." "Sanctify" means to make holy, to bring holiness into our lives. We should choose to do mitzvot, Rabbi Kushner argues, not because we believe that God commanded us and we must obey, but because we make our lives holy by doing mitzvot.

Then Rabbi Kushner asks the central question: What is holiness? What is holiness?

Rabbi Kushner suggests an answer to this question in an imaginative reading of the creation story.

We read in Genesis that God first existed alone. God then created the universe, starting with light and moving through the days of creation until, on the sixth day, the world included all the animals. Man had not yet been created. God then says, in verse 26 of chapter 1 in Genesis, "na’aseh adam b’tzelmeinu,” “Let us make man in our image."

According to this text, to whom is God speaking when God uses the words “us” and “our”? What does the text mean when it has God saying, “Let us make man in our image”?

Rabbi Kushner imagines that God has gathered a convention of all the animals. The way I envision this convention, God and representatives of all species of animals are seated together around an enormous conference table. The lions and tigers are over on this side. They are safely separated from the sheep and cattle over here. Scattered around the table are dogs and cats, frogs and mosquitoes and all other animal species.

As Rabbi Kushner reconstructs this imagined scene, God says to all those assembled animals:

Let us make man in our image. Between us, let us fashion a new kind of creature. This creature will resemble you animals in some ways, needing to eat, sleep, procreate. But this creature will also resemble Me in some ways, capable of making moral distinctions, capable of rising to a level of self-consciousness and self-control that no animal can achieve. This new creature will have your body but My breath, My spirit. The purpose of this creature’s existence will be to transcend its animal origins and experience true humanity through the achievement of holiness. It will find holiness in love as a dimension of procreation. It will find holiness in exercising self-control over appetite in all its manifestations. By tasting holiness, it will understand what it means to be a human being in the image of God. It will introduce a moral dimension into a world that would otherwise be ruled by blind, amoral Nature.

Rabbi Kushner concludes that, when we say “asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav," we are "praising God for having shown us the way to fashion and experience holiness through the performance of mitzvot."

Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson and Michelle Paterson and anyone else who commits adultery succumbs to animal passion. They behave in the same way that animals behave as documented in the Science Times article. But anyone who keeps his or her marriage vows and obeys the Seventh Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," rises above animal passion and follows the path of holiness.

Let me repeat Rabbi Kushner's central reason why we should live our lives by observing mitzvot. The very purpose of human existence is to transcend our animal origins and experience true humanity through the achievement of holiness. By observing mitzvot, we give meaning to our lives by making choices that only we are capable of making.

I am not merely arguing that we ought not commit adultery. The idea that observance of mitzvot provides us with a way to experience holiness in our lives is a much broader concept.

Rabbi Kushner applies his idea in three areas where we can experience holiness by being fully human through observing Jewish law: kashrut, fasting and Shabbat.

Here's what Rabbi Kushner had to say concerning each of these three areas, all as examples of doing mitzvot in order to experience holiness.

Kashrut will no longer be a random collection of prohibitions perceived as obsolete health regulations. Kashrut instead will be a way we can take something we share with animals, the need to eat regularly, and elevate it above the animal-instinctive levels. We can observe the categories of permitted and forbidden foods and combinations, even as we engage in sexual behavior in a human way rather than in an animal fashion by investing it with concepts of permitted and forbidden times and partners. Breakfast, lunch and supper become occasions for mindful eating rather than simply refueling our bodies.

Fasting on Yom Kippur will not be a matter of afflicting ourselves so that God will see our sincerity and our hunger pains and be moved to grant our prayers. Instead, fasting on Yom Kippur will be a way of proclaiming that we are truly human beings. We can do what no other creature on God's earth can do. We can be hungry and choose not to eat. We can be sexually aroused and choose not to respond. We can be angry and choose not to lash out. And when we realize that we have chosen badly, we can choose to repent and change.

What does Shabbat mean when we understand mitzvah not as obligation but as opportunity for holiness? We free Shabbat from being a negative experience defined by endless prohibitions. Instead, we restore it to what it was originally meant to be. We experience Shabbat as a proclamation that we are free men and women, not beasts and not slaves. Shabbat can be an experience of holiness and of freedom because it becomes a symbol of our ability to define time rather than to be defined by time.

The activities of animals are defined by Nature. Some are active in daylight, others are nocturnal. Some are active year-round, others hibernate the winter away. But they have no choice in the matter. Their instincts define how they use time.

But for human beings, and for human beings alone, time is malleable. We can shape it to our purposes. Only humans can take a day -- a birthday, an anniversary, a holiday -- and choose to make it special, and by their choice let themselves feel the 24 hours of that day as being different from the day before it or the day after it. Days, months, years are astronomical phenomena. They exist independent of any human activity. But the week is a human invention. As a way of demarcating a week, Shabbat is something that only human beings can recognize.

Rabbi Kushner concludes this way his description of Shabbat as we can observe it with an understanding of mitzvah as experience of holiness.

All week long, we are defined by our work. We deserve a day on which we are defined by who we are and not by what we do. All week long, we are bound to a schedule. How many times a day do we check our watches to see if we are running late? We deserve a day in which the concept of running late does not exist, a day free of time-bound obligations, when we tell time not by looking at our watch but by following the course of the sun across the sky.

As we enjoy the rest of this Shabbat, may we reflect on the ways in which we can introduce observance of mitzvot into our lives. In this way may we elevate our lives with holiness and move beyond our animal selves to experience fully our true humanity.