Increasing Closeness During Social Distance - Vayirka

Photos taken by me, of the same mushrooms on my
forest morning walks near St Ives, one day apart. 

In a weird way, I am feeling more emotionally connected now than I have felt for a long time. I feel like I’m a bit Aboriginal with their kinship system, or that I am moving from an “I and It” orientation to a “We” centred way of being (1).  

A week ago, there was a moment when I stood looking at empty shelves in the St Ives Coles supermarket. Potatoes, other vegetables, eggs, pasta - all gone! It seriously disturbed me. I am embarrassed to write this. People have died and will continue to die from this disease, while many others have lost their jobs, and spouses and children in abusive homes are suffering extreme distress.  It seems wrong to think about anything else. However, the reality is that we humans are spiritual beings living in animal bodies, and we’re desperately dependent on our next feed. There are things that we describe with pronouns like “it”, that are very important to us.

My children recently arrived back from Crown Heights in New York where the rate of contagion is high. Usually that is an occasion for hugs, but not this time. Fortunately, we have some space in the house to cordon off areas for them to be isolated in, but I am worried about the spread of this plague, so I am self isolating and working from home. While I like my 'things', like my office, it is more important to do my bit for the broader effort and stay home. I must sacrifice an “it” for the sake of the “we” that is the other humans in this city. The Torah’s word for sacrifice is essentially the same word as closeness (2) and the intention of the animal sacrifices in the temple was to create closeness with God (3).

People like me, who are privileged to be able to continue our jobs and earn a living from home, should spare a thought for those who cannot. I think of service workers in the US, such as those described by Jesse Jackson many years ago: “...women, who [put their own lives at risk to] clean out the bedpans of the sick, wipe the sweat of fever on their foreheads, change their clothes - and when they got sick, couldn't lie on the [same] bed they'd made up every day”! (4)

The term social distance is inaccurate (4). What we need is physical distance between bodies, rather than social distance between our spirits. Yet, we are seeing some evidence of the latter. Angela Kim, an Australian nurse with Asian ancestry recently wrote on Facebook: “I just saw a post with a picture of Asians on a bus saying they are hoarding from regional places. If this is true, I'm sorry. I myself am an Asian and I am deeply saddened to see people panic buying and being selfish during the crisis. But myself, my family, my friends and my colleagues being Asian, are not like them... So many times I get called out with racist comments on the street with anger. ...Generalisation occurs easily when there's fear and anger. ...please have an open mind, not all Asians are the same”.

Angela’s anguished post touched me. Other posts address generalisations about religious Jews' compliance with distancing. These are just some examples of the pain people are experiencing. A silver lining for me at this difficult time has been to tune in more strongly to other people. I am using social media and my phone more intentionally as a means of care, compassion and companionship. On Sunday, my family and I got dressed up for a cousins’ wedding in New York and recorded ourselves dancing in Sydney, as a way of being there for a family member. I am noticing wonderful anecdotes of kindness on social media. I hope that the terrible sacrifices and the suffering caused by this virus might lead to a brighter future for some people, in some way. But I am focused on the here and now - to increasingly support each other, as well as care for ourselves.

Notes

1)     From a conversation with Michelle Brenner, influenced by the work of Dr. Alan Watkins and others. 

2)     Korban, קרבן is the word for sacrifice, while Karov קרוב is the word for close. The root of both is ק.ר.ב.

3)     Likutei Torah based on Leviticus 1:2. It elaborates there on the spiritual meanings of various sacrifices, eg. to sacrifice an ox is to commit to reduce aggression, while a sheep represents selfish indulgence as manifest in sheep spending their days eating grass.

4)     https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/us/the-basic-speech-jesse-jackson-from-a-tradition-of-marching-for-jobs-and-rights.html  

5)     Ghassan Hage in a facebook post on 16.03.2020 “we spend so much time teaching students the difference between social and physical distances and here is the world normalising the usage of social distancing to mean physical distancing. what’s required is physical distancing, right?”

Reflecting on Jewish Marriage Sexual Ethics Lesson with Muslim Teens

A group of senior Muslim high school students, their teachers, a Catholic Priest and I, a Hasidic, bearded Rabbi, sat down recently for a discussion about Jewish marriage and sexual ethics as part of their Studies of Religion course.

I told the students what they needed to know for their course about weddings. I noted that In Judaism there are two distinct ceremonies. In earlier times these typically happened first in the home of the bride’s parents and then that of the groom’s parents (1) but today are done at the same time with only a symbolic break between them. I shared that I found it interesting when two Muslim that I know got married, it was not a one-step process. I attended a Nikah religious wedding ceremony in a Mosque and a wedding feast with loud Lebanese drums.

I was more interested in talking about marriage than weddings. I shared a memory with the students from a time when I was not much older than them. I had watched a scene in the movie, ‘Fidler on the Roof’.  The devoutly religious Jewish husband turns to his wife Goldeh, and asks her, “Do you love me?”. She finds the question bizarre and wonders if he had indigestion.  She replied: “Do I love you? for twenty-five years, I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house…milked the cow.  After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?”

As a young man I was terribly troubled by the implication that in my very orthodox world we could not expect to ever be in love. I had read some novels, and romantic loved seemed marvellous, but not for me, it seemed. Years later I realised that due to modesty, ultra-orthodox couples don’t show affection to each other in front of other people, making love invisible.

I explained to the students that Goldeh’s list of twenty-five years of caring action also reflects a Jewish idea about the feeling of love being a product of caring and loving behaviour. In the Torah we read that Isaac brought his wife Rebecca into his tent, he married her and he loved her (2). In that order.

I shared with them a Kabalistic teaching about Adam and Eve first being created back to back as a double human (3), one side female and the other male. “But God split them so that they could face each other, face to face, light in light” (4). Marriage is meant to be about a powerful experience of connection between a couple. Unfortunately, for many people in our time the mundane requirements of earning a living and housework leave little energy for anything else.

We are human beings, not machines. For this reason, we also need to consider sexual ethics. Due to the syllabus requirements, the students and I spent some time on technical questions about restrictions and exceptions relating to contraception and abortion. But we also got around to the requirement for consent for sex within marriage, and guidance about the right way being that the couple should have sex; when they are not angry with each other but rather out of joy (5).

We discussed pleasure. Specifically, Jewish teachings that encourage men to consider women’s sexual pleasure. Part of Jewish marriage is a contract called a Ketuba that stipulates a husband’s obligation to be available to his wife sexually.

I was pleased to learn from the Catholic priest that it was not correct that Sex is the original sin. He explained that it is more appropriate to think of a child being born into a morally troubled world.

A few days after the session at the Islamic school, I was reflecting on all of this and it got me thinking about the Jewish attitude to pleasure. Not just as a requirement of kindness from a husband to his wife.

One explanation of why snakes are not Kosher is because they “go on their bellies”. This is interpreted as being symbolic of a person being pleasure-driven, both in terms of food and sex (6). However, I recently read that God creates our desires (7). I don’t believe sexual desire or pleasure are bad, it is only when it is out of balance with other ways, being such as altruism, attentiveness to others in a range of ways, and being of service.

This is the heart of the matter: human beings, essentially similar, but significantly different in various ways, connecting in understanding each other and ourselves. 

 

Notes and sources 

1. Lamm, N. 2008, The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage
2. Genesis 24:67, The Baal Haturim makes the point that this love was unconditional in contrast to the “love” or lust refered in the case of Amnon whose conditional “love” for his sister Tamar vanished after he had intercourse with her.  
3. Genesis 1:27 states: in the image of G-d he created him, Male and Female He created them. This implies that the first human was both one and two, and is therefore referred to both as “him” and “male and female” and them”.
4. Zohar part 3, 44b
5. Maimonides, Yad Hachazaka, Hilchot De’ot 5:4
6. Chida, Vayikra, Parshat Shemini, 41, p.40
7. Kedushat Levi, Vayigash, section beginning with Oh Yevuar, p. 105, elaboration in Slater, J. 2004, Mindful Jewish Living, Compassionate practice, Avis Press, p. 311