Elul reflections 1: hesed
There is some debate about the relative importance and, for lack of a better word, "relative holiness" of the many (many) Jewish holidays. But if pressed, I suspect that most Jews would identify Yom Kippur -- which is just around the corner now -- as the holiest of Jewish holy days: the day on which we seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and at-one-ment with God (however we understand Him/Her).
But I propose that a lot of Jews are less aware of the holiness of the entire month that precedes the Days of Awe, the month of Elul, which is already upon us! Elul is a time for introspection and self-reflection, for a practice known as heshbon ha-nephesh, accounting of the soul. For the four weeks of Elul, I am trying to write one blog post a week looking at values, drawn from the Jewish tradition of Mussar as interpreted by contemporary sage Alan Morinis, that I think I -- and perhaps we as a society -- need to have more of in our "soul accounts."
This week: hesed (loving-kindness)
I took my children to the library this week and they came home with a VeggieTales video titled Beauty and the Beet. Now, I know that the entire VeggieTales enterprise is explicitly an Evangelical Christian one, and so I am wary of its attempts to evangelize my Jewish children, but at the same time the Veggies often explore Hebrew Bible stories, such as the stories of Jonah and Esther, and come out the other end with clever explications of values our two traditions share. So I went into watching (or listening to, rather, since they wanted to play the video in our minivan while I drove) this video with a mix of optimism and hesitation.
The opening song horrified me. It was a sort of country-western-style love song in which the female lead singer described what a horrible lout her boyfriend was and how all of her friends were pushing her to move on to someone who would be better for her, but then explained that God saw him differently and wanted her to show him love. It was the sort of abuse of Christian theology that was decried by many a feminist theologian back in my Seminary days, used by well-meaning laypeople and clergy alike to tell abused and battered spouses that they needed to stay in the abusive relationships because (a) Jesus calls us to a life of suffering for others and (b) the abuser clearly needs their love. *shudder*
The movie did go uphill from there. The overall plot was that the VeggieTones, a family music troup bound for a career-making concert, get stranded by a snowstorm at a run-down hotel with a grumpy "beast" (the Beet of the title) of an owner who makes the Veggies do menial housework to pay off the cost of their room and board until they find a way to escape. Meanwhile, the eldest daughter (the Beauty of the title) takes an interest in the Beet, decides to show him kindness, pushes him into accepting singing lessons from her, and eventually cracks his tough shell. Idealistic, predictable, and saccharine sweet, but endearing in that VeggieTales way nonetheless.
And chock full of songs about passing on God's love to people who we can't stand (and who are therefore clearly in need of more love). And that message is undeniably Christian: Jesus says in Matthew's gospel (5:44) "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (KJV translation).
But really - love your enemies? Does that mean that I need to go take the rudest person at the party out on a date to show them what love is really like? Double-down on pouring love into a marriage where my spouse has virtually become my enemy? Become lifelong friends with the student who is making my life a living hell complaining about every choice I make in teaching and administering my class?
This is not a Jewish way of looking at the world. The traditional Jewish interpretation of the commandment to "love your neighbors" -- that our "neighbors" are those we share a community with, like our fellow Jews or our colleagues or our geographical neighbors, or other people we have a reason to be in community with -- falls short of commanding us to love everyone, and certainly there is an expected reciprocity in that loving relationship: we are not expected to continue loving someone who has deliberately made themselves our enemy.
But doesn't this Jewish interpretation fall short of creating that world of universal kindness and respect that we all dream of? That world where God's values hold sway over everyone that we sing of in the Aleinu each time we pray together?
In short, could this be one of those places where Judaism and Christianity could perhaps learn from one another?
One problem with the traditional Christian understanding that we need to extend "love" to our enemies, the understanding that leads to bad pop theology that props up abusive marriages and keeps a person from really doing in a bully who badly deserves it, is the English word "love" itself. English, with its plethora of words for almost everything and every situation, has only one word for love.
In Greek there are three words for love: philos (often translated "brotherly love" but apparently more obsessive than that, as in the words "audiophile" or "frankophile" or even "pedophile"), eros (romantic/sexual love), and agape (transcendent, unconditional love or affection or charity). The word used in the Matthew quote above is "agape". So we are to have transcendent, unconditional feelings of love, affection, or charity toward our enemies. Does that get us anywhere in the inter-faith dialog business?
Where it gets me, the more I think about it, is to a similar distinction in Hebrew. There are two words that my siddur translates as "love" (when talking, for example, about God's love for us): ahavah and hesed.
Ahavah is the traditional American-English understanding of love: an all-in mutual relationship that includes deep affection and giving of the self for the well-being of the other, and often carries an erotic or at least ecstatic overtone. God has ahavah for us and we are commanded ( v'ahavtah ) to have ahavah love for (a) God and (b) our rei'a (a relationship somewhere between friend and neighbor/acquaintance), but not for everyone, and certainly not for our enemies.
Hesed is most often translated as "loving-kindness," but that does not quite capture the sense of the term. Hesed, according to Morinis, goes beyond just being kind, even in a loving way. When used to describe God, and it often is, hesed seems to carry a connotation of acts given selflessly and generously to care for and sustain another. Morinis defines hesed as "generous sustaining benevolence," offering time, money, empathy, service, an open ear, or other assistance that we are uniquely qualified to give...with no sense of obligation and with no expectation of reward or other reciprocal payback.
Now this might get us toward an acceptable Jewish interpretation of Beauty and the Beet -- and an important lesson as we get ready for the Days of Awe and ask to be inscribed in the Book for a year of good life. We don't need to love rude, hateful, or spite-filled people in the sense of offering them our ahavah, our affection and our attempt at an all-in mutual relationship, as the Christian "love your enemies" would seem to suggest. Instead, we need to see the mitzvah in offering such people hesed.
That is, after all, what works for the "Beauty" in our story: she goes beyond what is required of her to offer her time, her listening ear, her counsel, and a gift of music that she is uniquely qualified to offer, with no expectation of reward except that she hopes to touch the Beet in some way. But we still can't expect all of our acts of chesed to move the recipient: Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler tells us that there are "takers" who see anything you do for them as their natural right and remain unmoved, but that there are also "receivers" who expect nothing from you and are moved with gratitude when you do what you can for them. We hope for "receivers" when we do our hesed, but we have to have the realistic expectation that the world has its share of "takers" as well.
And so, as the prophet Micah tells us, we do hesed because we "love" the act of doing kindness itself, and we are simply pleasantly surprised when the consequence is a change for the better in the recipient.
So maybe the Jews among my readers can learn something here from a bit of inter-faith musing: that we owe it to ourselves (and to God) to do hesed to everyone, even or perhaps especially to those who seem to make themselves our enemies from the get-go: the rude, the bullying, the uppity, the hateful or spiteful, those who couldn't care less. And, in this increasingly polarized day and age, those who put themselves self-righteously (and other-condemningly) on the opposite side of whatever issue we happen to try to bring up with them (or that they choose to bring up with us).
And maybe the Christians among my readers could consider substituting acts of hesed for feelings of love in that famous phrase "love your enemies."
Because with those frustrating people out there -- indeed, with all people out there -- couldn't a little loving-kindness, a little sustaining benevolent generosity, go a long way?
And wouldn't our world be closer to where we want it to go, closer to l'takein olam b'malkhut Shaddai, if we all gave a little more of ourselves, a little more hesed, to people out there who desperately need it...even if they have a lousy way of showing it?
Elul tov, everybody, and may we all learn what we need for a good new year...
But I propose that a lot of Jews are less aware of the holiness of the entire month that precedes the Days of Awe, the month of Elul, which is already upon us! Elul is a time for introspection and self-reflection, for a practice known as heshbon ha-nephesh, accounting of the soul. For the four weeks of Elul, I am trying to write one blog post a week looking at values, drawn from the Jewish tradition of Mussar as interpreted by contemporary sage Alan Morinis, that I think I -- and perhaps we as a society -- need to have more of in our "soul accounts."
This week: hesed (loving-kindness)
I took my children to the library this week and they came home with a VeggieTales video titled Beauty and the Beet. Now, I know that the entire VeggieTales enterprise is explicitly an Evangelical Christian one, and so I am wary of its attempts to evangelize my Jewish children, but at the same time the Veggies often explore Hebrew Bible stories, such as the stories of Jonah and Esther, and come out the other end with clever explications of values our two traditions share. So I went into watching (or listening to, rather, since they wanted to play the video in our minivan while I drove) this video with a mix of optimism and hesitation.
The opening song horrified me. It was a sort of country-western-style love song in which the female lead singer described what a horrible lout her boyfriend was and how all of her friends were pushing her to move on to someone who would be better for her, but then explained that God saw him differently and wanted her to show him love. It was the sort of abuse of Christian theology that was decried by many a feminist theologian back in my Seminary days, used by well-meaning laypeople and clergy alike to tell abused and battered spouses that they needed to stay in the abusive relationships because (a) Jesus calls us to a life of suffering for others and (b) the abuser clearly needs their love. *shudder*
The movie did go uphill from there. The overall plot was that the VeggieTones, a family music troup bound for a career-making concert, get stranded by a snowstorm at a run-down hotel with a grumpy "beast" (the Beet of the title) of an owner who makes the Veggies do menial housework to pay off the cost of their room and board until they find a way to escape. Meanwhile, the eldest daughter (the Beauty of the title) takes an interest in the Beet, decides to show him kindness, pushes him into accepting singing lessons from her, and eventually cracks his tough shell. Idealistic, predictable, and saccharine sweet, but endearing in that VeggieTales way nonetheless.
And chock full of songs about passing on God's love to people who we can't stand (and who are therefore clearly in need of more love). And that message is undeniably Christian: Jesus says in Matthew's gospel (5:44) "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (KJV translation).
But really - love your enemies? Does that mean that I need to go take the rudest person at the party out on a date to show them what love is really like? Double-down on pouring love into a marriage where my spouse has virtually become my enemy? Become lifelong friends with the student who is making my life a living hell complaining about every choice I make in teaching and administering my class?
This is not a Jewish way of looking at the world. The traditional Jewish interpretation of the commandment to "love your neighbors" -- that our "neighbors" are those we share a community with, like our fellow Jews or our colleagues or our geographical neighbors, or other people we have a reason to be in community with -- falls short of commanding us to love everyone, and certainly there is an expected reciprocity in that loving relationship: we are not expected to continue loving someone who has deliberately made themselves our enemy.
But doesn't this Jewish interpretation fall short of creating that world of universal kindness and respect that we all dream of? That world where God's values hold sway over everyone that we sing of in the Aleinu each time we pray together?
In short, could this be one of those places where Judaism and Christianity could perhaps learn from one another?
One problem with the traditional Christian understanding that we need to extend "love" to our enemies, the understanding that leads to bad pop theology that props up abusive marriages and keeps a person from really doing in a bully who badly deserves it, is the English word "love" itself. English, with its plethora of words for almost everything and every situation, has only one word for love.
In Greek there are three words for love: philos (often translated "brotherly love" but apparently more obsessive than that, as in the words "audiophile" or "frankophile" or even "pedophile"), eros (romantic/sexual love), and agape (transcendent, unconditional love or affection or charity). The word used in the Matthew quote above is "agape". So we are to have transcendent, unconditional feelings of love, affection, or charity toward our enemies. Does that get us anywhere in the inter-faith dialog business?
Where it gets me, the more I think about it, is to a similar distinction in Hebrew. There are two words that my siddur translates as "love" (when talking, for example, about God's love for us): ahavah and hesed.
Ahavah is the traditional American-English understanding of love: an all-in mutual relationship that includes deep affection and giving of the self for the well-being of the other, and often carries an erotic or at least ecstatic overtone. God has ahavah for us and we are commanded ( v'ahavtah ) to have ahavah love for (a) God and (b) our rei'a (a relationship somewhere between friend and neighbor/acquaintance), but not for everyone, and certainly not for our enemies.
Hesed is most often translated as "loving-kindness," but that does not quite capture the sense of the term. Hesed, according to Morinis, goes beyond just being kind, even in a loving way. When used to describe God, and it often is, hesed seems to carry a connotation of acts given selflessly and generously to care for and sustain another. Morinis defines hesed as "generous sustaining benevolence," offering time, money, empathy, service, an open ear, or other assistance that we are uniquely qualified to give...with no sense of obligation and with no expectation of reward or other reciprocal payback.
Now this might get us toward an acceptable Jewish interpretation of Beauty and the Beet -- and an important lesson as we get ready for the Days of Awe and ask to be inscribed in the Book for a year of good life. We don't need to love rude, hateful, or spite-filled people in the sense of offering them our ahavah, our affection and our attempt at an all-in mutual relationship, as the Christian "love your enemies" would seem to suggest. Instead, we need to see the mitzvah in offering such people hesed.
That is, after all, what works for the "Beauty" in our story: she goes beyond what is required of her to offer her time, her listening ear, her counsel, and a gift of music that she is uniquely qualified to offer, with no expectation of reward except that she hopes to touch the Beet in some way. But we still can't expect all of our acts of chesed to move the recipient: Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler tells us that there are "takers" who see anything you do for them as their natural right and remain unmoved, but that there are also "receivers" who expect nothing from you and are moved with gratitude when you do what you can for them. We hope for "receivers" when we do our hesed, but we have to have the realistic expectation that the world has its share of "takers" as well.
And so, as the prophet Micah tells us, we do hesed because we "love" the act of doing kindness itself, and we are simply pleasantly surprised when the consequence is a change for the better in the recipient.
So maybe the Jews among my readers can learn something here from a bit of inter-faith musing: that we owe it to ourselves (and to God) to do hesed to everyone, even or perhaps especially to those who seem to make themselves our enemies from the get-go: the rude, the bullying, the uppity, the hateful or spiteful, those who couldn't care less. And, in this increasingly polarized day and age, those who put themselves self-righteously (and other-condemningly) on the opposite side of whatever issue we happen to try to bring up with them (or that they choose to bring up with us).
And maybe the Christians among my readers could consider substituting acts of hesed for feelings of love in that famous phrase "love your enemies."
Because with those frustrating people out there -- indeed, with all people out there -- couldn't a little loving-kindness, a little sustaining benevolent generosity, go a long way?
And wouldn't our world be closer to where we want it to go, closer to l'takein olam b'malkhut Shaddai, if we all gave a little more of ourselves, a little more hesed, to people out there who desperately need it...even if they have a lousy way of showing it?
Elul tov, everybody, and may we all learn what we need for a good new year...
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