September 2014

Dear Friends,

As we prepare for the High Holidays, I want to share with you a thought-provoking teaching from the Talmud I learned from my friend and teacher Rabbi Mishael Zion.

In the school of Rabbi Ishmael it was taught: It can be likened to a shopkeeper selling [foul smelling] kerosene oil and [wonderfully aromatic] persimmon oil.  If a purchaser comes to measure kerosene, the shopkeeper says to him: Measure it out for yourself; but to one who came to measure out persimmon oil, he says: Hang on, wait, until I can measure together with you, so that both you and I may become perfumed.  (Talmud Bavli Yoma 39a)

In this unusual (and challenging) image, God is a shopkeeper who is the source of both the good and the foul-smelling events and actions of the world.

What are we to make of this?  Why would the Talmud compare God to a shopkeeper selling toxic substances?  Wouldn’t we rather God as manager of a natural foods store or farmers’ market?

I believe the Talmud is responding to an age-old question: What is the source of evil in the world?  If God is only good, the Rabbis thought, that opens the possibility that evil in the world represents the absence of God, or even the presence of another evil force like the Devil in Christianity.  Yet, as monotheists who insist that there is only one all-powerful force in the universe, the Rabbis wanted to find a way to understand that everything comes from God.

Yet, if everything comes from God, then God must be responsible for the good and the bad within us, the yetzer hatov – the inclination for good, and the yetzer harah, our own evil inclination that makes us do bad things.  So, the Rabbis wonder, and we might, too, if God is responsible for our positive and hurtful sides, why bother doing tshuvah and repenting?

So, the Rabbi’s answer, we can’t simplify God, or understand why God would let terrible things happen.  But we can imagine that God prefers that we choose to do good.

Thus, in the Rabbi’s imagination, God peddles toxic and dangerous items as well as beautiful, fragrant substances, but only wants to share the experience of smelling what is sweet. As my friend Rabbi Zion puts it, “She enables those who come to defile (and they are proud to say that they bought their wares in Her shop). But it is those who seek to purify that She invites into a relationship.”

This summer, people caused so much pain in the name of God – figuratively, kerosene was spilled everywhere and left to burn, and the perpetrators advertised that they had bought their weapons from God’s own shop.  Though I deeply disagree with fundamentalists’ use of violence, I recognize that calls for holy fighting are present throughout the Bible and our tradition.  While I cannot claim that the Bible only teaches sweetness, I do believe that God rejoices when we pick the path of kindness and righteousness over that of violence.

So, this month, let us resist that which is hurtful, and choose that which is sweet like persimmon oil. Let us pray that, as we enter the pre-Rosh Hashanah month of Elul, we can take time to explore what smells beautiful to our souls, and prepare to anoint ourselves with sweet thoughts and actions for the coming year..

And then, as we come to purify ourselves through the self-reflection, prayer, and the haunting melodies of the High Holidays, let us quiet the noise of the world and listen, hopeful that the divine shopkeeper will join us in the sweetness of the moment.

Blessings for a beautiful month,

Rabbi Margie