I was walking in the park just yesterday with a colleague,
Caleb,
And he is about to teach to his church the Book of Judges.
Certainly a powerfully violent book,
Which raises questions of are we intended to abhor the violence or celebrate it?
But the Book of Judges,
As periods of warlordism in Somalia or Afghanistan or any other country prior to concentration of power is describing a terrible environment of near chaos and anarchy of constant internecine fighting.
And Caleb is one of the only people I've ever heard pick up on the same thing,
Which is that the core of biblical authority and moralism is this,
And it's actually in this week's Torah reading,
Do not do as one might do now where every man,
Every person does what he believes to be right in his own eyes.
That the worst kind of morality,
Says our Torah,
Is autonomous morality.
This idea that you are the final arbiter of what is valuable and good is a foolhardy endeavor and that there has to be a submission to a greater authority.
Of course,
In Scripture,
That authority is God and God's writing and God's law.
But that way leads chaos.
The idea that everyone just figures it out for themselves and does what she or he thinks is right is a recipe for disaster,
Chaos,
And anarchy.
And that's more or less what we see towards the end of the Book of Joshua in the Book of Judges.
And as I said with Caleb,
The only thing that humans like less than fascism is anarchy.
They will tolerate tyranny if the alternative is chaos.
Demagogues around the world have said,
The alternative to my tyranny is chaos.
What do we do with that?
How do we create a society with interconnectedness,
Interdependence,
And a sense of moral responsibility one to the other?
How do we create a society of art and creativity,
As is the subject I usually address,
Where we each feel a responsibility through our making and creativity to uphold God's desire for that art,
God's desire for the society in which the art can be honored and revered?
So this week in the Torah,
There's a lot of conversation around loans and poverty.
We are told in Deuteronomy 15 verse 10,
That you should not make your heart ill,
Make your heart wicked,
By withholding a loan.
You should surely give it.
To which our sages note that not only can you not refuse a loan,
You can't even extend the loan reluctantly.
This is one of the cases for the main Judaism focuses on action,
Visible action,
Not implicit belief or feeling around it.
But in this case,
You are not allowed to make your heart discomforted,
Literally to make it wicked or wickedized,
One might say in silly,
Serendipitous English.
But that is to say you can't make a loan with discomfort in your heart.
You have to do it with kindness and generosity,
Whether or not it might be repaid.
And says another medieval sages,
Even if you needed to make that loan 100 times.
And I have made loans to people realizing at some level,
It was a gift,
They weren't going to repay.
It became frustrating after a while.
And I'm sure many of us have experienced that to be solicited for borrowing money,
Knowing that that wasn't exactly the goal.
But it is part of a society that is constructed that we share of our resources,
Our creativity,
Our capacity,
Our gifts.
Maimonides,
The great medieval philosopher and law writer,
Caught a fire in his laws of poor,
So that he has never ever heard or seen about a Jewish community that doesn't have a charity fund,
Which seems like hyperbole,
But actually feels possible.
It is an incredibly early invention in the founding of a Jewish community.
Typically,
The first two things that happen are a cemetery for the dead and a school for the young.
But I would imagine a close third or at most a fourth would be a charitable fund for the poor,
For the indigent.
It is consistent throughout Jewish history.
In the ancient period,
It was called a tamchuy,
Which was more or less a food bank.
But there were always Hebrew loan societies such that people could avail themselves of the loans that the Torah is speaking of this week.
I have not advocated that artists should be politically minded explicitly,
That they should be of any particular persuasion on the political spectrum,
Nor do I advocate that art should be political intentionally.
That can be very heavy-handed and not good art.
But it should be deeply compassionate.
It should teach us empathy for the other.
To quote the books,
The Song of Ice and Fire,
On which Game of Thrones is based,
Someone who does not read only lives once,
But someone who reads lives many lives.
And I think I'm misquoting it,
Actually.
But the idea that art can teach us compassion and empathy and perspective-taking,
I would agree with.
Great art has a heart.
Great art has a soul.
Great art has a viewpoint and a capacity to see and a capacity to listen.
So if we think of those as a kind of charity,
And I think that's fair in the Jewish tradition because the word used for charity is most often tzedakah,
Which is to be righteous,
To be correct.
In fact,
The jazz musician John Zorn has a record label called tzedik,
Which is the righteous.
So I'm going to quote you a few things from the Talmud that I think are very sweet.
I will share them without much comment because I think they explain themselves.
But 10 powerful things,
Says the Talmud in Baha Batra,
Page 10.
10 powerful things were created in the world.
Mountains are hard,
But iron cuts through them.
Iron is hard,
But fire melts it.
Fire is strong,
But water extinguishes it.
Water is strong,
But clouds can carry it.
Clouds are strong,
But winds scatter them.
Wind is strong,
But the body contains it.
The body is strong,
But fear breaks it.
Fear is potent,
But wine dispels it.
Wine is powerful,
But sleep assuages it.
And stronger than all of these is death,
But charity delivers from death.
And I don't think they were so foolish as to think they meant literally.
It's a kind of legacy.
It's a kind of forestalling of our death that we might remain through our charitable and empathetic and caring and creative works.
I guess I'm just bringing to you a lot of stories and texts from this week's tour reading about the importance of giving.
I would transform that in the importance of art to be giving,
To be empathetic,
To be broad,
To be expansive,
To be wise.
I'm going to share with you one of my favorite stories that comes up in relation to this week's tour reading.
This also comes from a similar place.
In the Torah,
There is a Roman consul,
I believe he was,
Understood to be wicked.
Did he really exist?
I don't know or care.
He's called Ternus Rufus,
Which the name itself sounds so ridiculous.
I imagine he is more of an archetype or an avatar than a physical person.
So Ternus Rufus,
Often called the Wicked Ternus Rufus,
Says to Rabbi Akiva,
One of our great sages,
If your God loves the poor,
Why doesn't God support them?
And Akiva said,
Oh,
That's so we can be saved from them through the punishment of Gehinnom.
Gehinnom was one of the ideas of hell or hellishness.
On the contrary,
Said Ternus Rufus,
It's that which condemns you to Gehinnom.
I'll give you a parable.
And just as Jesus did,
Our rabbis of the same era spoke in parables,
Which I highly recommend.
Metaphor and parable are great ways to learn things.
Suppose there was an earthly king,
And I will inform you now that a king,
As understood in parable,
Is always understood to be about God.
The king was angry with his servant and put him in prison and ordered that he should be given no food or drink.
And a man went and gave him food and drink.
If the king heard,
Would he not be angry with the man?
Because Israelites are called servants in one verse,
Says Ternus Rufus.
So as a servant,
When there are poor,
It is fated to them.
It is as they should be,
Says the Roman or implies the Roman.
And you should not ameliorate poverty.
Rabbi Akiva slaps him and turns this one right on its head.
He said,
Let me give you a different parable.
Suppose there's an earthly king who's angry with his son,
Not the servant,
His son,
And put the son in prison and ordered that no food or drink should be given to him.
And someone went and gave him food or drink.
Nonetheless,
If the king heard of it,
Wouldn't he not send that person a present?
Because we,
Israelites,
Are called sons,
Sons of the Most High,
Says in Scripture.
So Akiva finishes with this button.
He says,
You're called sons and servants.
I guess it might actually be Ternus Rufus speaking.
When you carry out the will of the omnipresent,
You are called sons,
And when you do not carry out the will of the omnipresent,
You become only servants.
So I think very clearly throughout the Jewish tradition,
There is a demand to support the vulnerable.
There is a demand to be expansive of heart and creativity.
There is a demand to solve the problems,
Not just to watch the problems.
Again,
I don't think art should be heavy-handedly political.
I don't think art should be message songs or message poetry.
But within your writing and your making and creating,
May you have an expansive heart.
May you have a heart of compassion and a heart of willingness to see the other and a heart that is willing to see the other side.
I mean,
Certainly,
At the very least,
If you are an author,
A fiction,
A novelist,
You need to be able to write diverse characters.
So giving yourself the practice of seeing multiple and being compassionate with all can't hurt your art.
