Lisa Whitmore

Asilomar 2006

Treasure at Beth-Peor - Dvar Torah on Va'etchanan - Asilomar 5766

They found another Dead Sea scroll. It was so recently that not even the rabbis know about it.  It wasn't located in the pious region of Qumran but, rather, closer to where our Torah portion for the week takes place, near Beth-peor, but it is not a story found in the Torah.  A young man speaks to his Kohen about being ritually impure.  He describes relentlessly spilling his seed.  He is obsessed with Canaanite women.  One year on Sukkot he failed to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his family and went home with a Canaanite girl instead.  But he is profoundly torn between this obsession for the women of the surrounding tribe and the Israelite code of behavior.  For example, when he encounters Canaanite idols he isn't drawn into idolatry but at that moment finally feels close to his religion. At this point tries to find a real, Israelite woman, but with her he is unable to perform. He blames this disconnect between love and lust on his mother who once threatened him with a bread knife when he wouldn't eat.  If one of the worst things that can happen to a Jew is to be cut off from his community, karet, then being threatened by one's mother holding a cutting knife is surely traumatic.  Our Torah portion for this week, Vaet'chanan, alludes to an incident in which a group of men engaged in orgies with the women of Beth-peor and were subsequently punished by being impaled on sticks.  We don't know if the Kohen will be able to help this young man resolve his issues.  The Kohen is silent until the end of the text at which point he says, [ask fellow congregants].

Some of you might have recognized that I just told you the story, Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth but delicately retold it as a Biblical story.  Roth is one of the most renown fiction writers in American, and he's a Jewish.  But Portnoy's Complaint is probably known as one of the most vulgar and offensive narratives in the English language.  Some of you might even be wondering why I would mention it on this sacred morning, while those who love the book wonder where this sermon is going.

I received Portnoy's Complaint as a gift from a longtime friend when I informed him of my intent to convert to Judaism.  It was appropriate in a way: My admiration of Jewish culture first led me to the religion.  And for my secular friend it is a valid commentary on assimilation.  But I was surprised that the book ended up giving voice to such a negative rant.  I was expecting something more dignified from an important work of American Jewish fiction, especially one being given to me on that occasion.  I can't dismiss it. In fact, I can't get this culture clash out of my head.  Cynicism is artistically cutting edge, but it was the authors I was reading in preparation for conversion who were dazzling my mind and taking it to new places.   On the one hand, here's the Portnoy of modern fiction wallowing in exaggerated visions of humiliation.  On the other hand, here's a grand view of human dignity, strengthened by unambiguous guidelines, a vision of the good, and a relationship to the infinite and eternal. 

The young Alexander Portnoy, who is always 400% right about everything, views the world as if it runs on a currency of power and sex appeal, and he even subjects his family and religious community to this uncharitable lens, portraying them as self-deceiving caricatures.  It is the lens of a modern, urban, commercial America .  Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the authors I was reading in preparation for conversion, developed his spiritual vitality in the Jewish communities he grew up in in Poland and Germany .  He offers his own critique of the America of the mid-twentieth century, including its synagogues and churches:  "The cardinal sin is boredom, and the major failure the denial to our young of moments of exaltation.  We have shaped our lives around the practical, the utilitarian, devoid of dreams and vision, higher concerns and enthusiasms." [228]. 

Vaet'chanan, and indeed the entire Torah, is very concerned with protecting the people's spiritual vitality (here specifically their capacity to maintain a high standard of holiness) against the influences around them.  Nearly every verse of Vaet'chanan contributes to a complex strategy for reinforcing the teaching.  Instead of introducing strings of more and more detailed laws like we see later in Deuteronomy, Vaet'chanan builds up a bulwark to reinforce the basic ideas.  Moses restates the Ten Commandments. The number ten is an organizing device, ten can be counted on one's fingers, one can recite ten.  Ten laws were given to us directly, not mediated through Moses, and Moses introduces the idea that whenever we study the Ten Commandments we should imagine that we were present, receiving them directly from God. This makes them immediate and urgent.  Moses raises the stakes by orating on the rewards and punishments, "that you may live well in the land."  Indeed his own banishment from the Promised Land, as well as the fate of the Beth-peor idolaters, serve as examples of God's punitive power.  Knowing that the impact of his sermon will fade over time, Moses instructs the Israelites to place reminders of the law on their doorposts and on their bodies.  Moses instructs the Israelites to pass the teaching on to their children via the Exodus story.  This portion, which also includes our mantra and creed, "Shma Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai echad," comes from this portion, inspires our traditions for Pesach, Shavuot, and daily prayer.  Moses even conceives of the seclusion of Israel in order to reinforce and preserve this way of living, stating they should not intermarry, and nations should be destroyed lest they threaten Israel 's sanctity.  The complexity of Moses' strategy tells me that the "perfect Teaching," though grand and divine, is also fragile.  It is like a precious, delicate egg to be cherished, nurtured, and protected.

The final strategy, though the least spiritual, is perhaps the most interesting with respect to Jewish culture.  Moses appeals to the Israelites' desire to be thought well of by others.  He says, "Observe [the laws and rules] faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, 'Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.' "  [Deuteronomy 4:6]

Even Portnoy is loath to give up the reputation for wisdom and discernment, which is threatened by his reckless behavior.  Portnoy's debate with himself sounds like this,  "Where appetite is concerned, a man in his thirties is responsible to no one but himself! [...] You want to take? You take! Debauch a little bit, for Christ's sake! STOP DENYING YOURSELF! STOP DENYING THE TRUTH!/ Ah, but there is (let us bow our heads), there is "my dignity" to consider, my good name. What people will think. What I will think." [199]  For me the redeeming quality of the book is that Portnoy is unable dismiss his religion and culture but is forced to struggle with it.  It is like the story of Israel in reverse. In this case the culture hangs on Portnoy's ankle, and Portnoy has to bless is.

I presented Portnoy's Complaint as a Dead Sea Scroll in order to ponder where we are with respect to the culture of the Torah.  The sin at Beth-peor was idolatry and not sex (or dirty words, or objectifying women, or any of those other annoying things that Portnoy does).  Our culture abounds in images, and we don't think of them as Gods. Instead we perceive of physical forces, human nature, the forces of commerce as ruling the universe.  Sometimes our empiricism is scientifically reinforced.  Sometimes it is distorted, as in Portnoy's exaggerated visions of humiliation.  Moses says, "And when you look up to the sky and behold the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole heavenly host, you must not be lured into bowing down to them or serving them." [Deuteronomy 4:15-19]  Moses might tell Jews of today not to bow down to the status quo as an insurmountable force eroding our faith in goodness.

Rabbi Marder sums up the ancient Jewish strategy of using boundaries to protect a holy way of life when she advises "You have to choose your friends."  Here is an unlikely question from a former graduate student of literature: are books like friends that one should choose with thought?  I was trained to pour it all in but maintain analytical distance, to read everything with a thick skin.  But a lot of cutting-edge literature seems to capitalize on our worst fears of meaninglessness and emptiness.

In another context I learn from our rabbis about Pirkei Avot, that one is not free to wash one's hands of the world.  Complete seclusion might foster strong and pure faith but would not facilitate interacting with or improving the world.  Further, our religion wants us to enjoy the pleasures of life.  Are the often cynical and nihilistic fruits of the modern imagination alternatively a kind of wine to be made holy through ritual, perhaps though chavruta?

Some people, and I used to be among them, only have secular culture as a means of engaging with meaning, and in my experience you can't rely on it for exaltation or meaning of life.  I feel very lucky. Those of us here have something else.  We have this precious, fragile egg, this divine notion of good, this community that lives from and in this notion, and the love that it enables.

Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint. 1967. New York : Vintage Books, 1994.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, 'In Search of Exaltation' in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996 (originally published Fall, 1971 in Jewish Heritage 13:3).