Toward the end of Parashat Behar, the section of the Torah that we read this coming Shabbat, the Torah speaks of our need to redeem Israelites who, due to their poverty, put themselves into slavery. And these specific commands are quite consistent with the Torah's commandments elsewhere. God says, "For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants. They are My servants, whom I freed from the Land of Egypt, I, the Holy One, your God (Lv 25:55)."
Nothing shocking there: The Torah once again proclaims a teaching noble and uplifting, and consistent with its message of human dignity and freedom for all. What strikes me this year in looking at that passage (found at the very end of the Parashah), is it that it precedes another paragraph that condemns idolatry, a topic that appears to have nothing to do with the topic at hand. If you see an Israelite enslaved, it is your obligation to free that person. Then, without transition, the Torah launches an attack against idolatry, and an insistence on observing the Sabbath: "You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up for yourselves carved images or pillars, or place figured stones in your land to worship upon, for I, the Holy One, am your God. You shall keep my Sabbath, and venerate my Sanctuary. Mine, the Holy One (Lv 26:1-2)."
By itself, the second passage is no more surprising than the first. It is not exactly news that the Torah condemns idolatry, nor that the Torah commands us that we should set aside a sacred time - the Sabbath and the festivals - or that we should create space in which to encounter The Holy One. It is not unique to hear Leviticus tell us those things. But I would like to tweak a Talmudic question: mah etzel herut l'avodah zarah? What is the connection between freedom and idolatry? Why would the Torah place those two concerns adjacent to one another? What's the link between liberty and false worship? Between freedom and holy spacetime?
Here I believe the Torah is making three points through the juxtaposition, and they are points that I commend to all of us.
The first point the Torah elicits from this juxtaposition, is that if a religious life does not stand on a base of human concern - specifically a concern for other people - then it has no base whatsoever. Notice that the pasuk does not speak about our obligation to liberate ourselves. It is human nature, naturally, to focus on oneself and to make one's concerns the central and primary object of our own attention. Precisely for that reason, I believe, the Torah insists that the liberation of other people must be our own most pressing concern. Indeed, that concern is the very consequence of God's having liberated us from slavery. We are summoned as Jews and as human beings to work for the redemption of those who are enslaved, those whose suffering is in our midst; this, both as a reflection of God's Nature - ani HaShem - and as a consequence of having been brought to freedom, asher hotzeiti otam me-eretz Mitzrayim.
Second Insight: Idolatry is not a matter of simply putting the wrong name to, or associating the wrong image, with the Divine. Idolatry is a matter of missing the Divine entirely, of elevating to worship what is unworthy of our devotion. God's very nature is radical freedom; a freedom that explodes into space and time; a freedom that liberates slaves, and a freedom that brings people to their promised home. It is easy in Western culture to confuse idolatry with an intellectual or a theological error. You built the wrong structure. You bow to the wrong divinity. You attribute to that divinity the wrong shape or the wrong name. But the God of Israel is not simply a different shape or a different structure. One cannot erect a visual image of God. One cannot, in our tradition, lightly and casually utter God's name. Instead, our Torah creates a link to remind us that God is beyond all visualization, beyond all representation. Judaism, as a religion, trains us to focus on the invisible, beginning precisely with the person who is invisible in our midst.
In the Talmud, in Tractate Haggigah, we are told a wonderful story. Rebbi and Rabbi Hiyya are journeying, and arrive a certain town and they ask the people in the town, "If there is a rabbinical scholar here, we would pay him a visit to do him and his Torah honor." The inhabitants of the town say, "There is indeed such a scholar here, but he is blind." Rabbi Hiyya, always concerned for the dignity of Rebbi's high office, says, "You stay here. I will go and I will visit that person and I will pay respects on your behalf." Rebbi refuses to listen, and the Talmud tells us "he bests Rebbe Hiyya" and goes along. When they are finished with their meeting with this blind, anonymous scholar, the unnamed sage gives them a blessing: "You came to pay your respects to one who is seen, but does not see. May you merit to pay your respects to the One who sees, but is not seen." And Rebbi then turns to Rabbi Hiyya and he says, "Had I listened to you, you would have prevented me from receiving this blessing."
Attending to the invisible is precisely the job of each of us. An invisible God, invisible people, invisible causes; people whom we choose to make invisible, or we simply overlook. It is precisely from those invisible ones that our blessings are to be derived.
Third Insight: The true worship of the Divine is the institutionalization of freedom, placing our concern for each other at the center of our spiritual life and of rising to a life of service and gratitude. We know that we are worshipping the true source of holiness when there is no wall of separation between the redemption of our brothers and sisters and the marking of sacred time et Shabbtotai tishmeru, and the reverence of sacred space, mikdashai tira'u. The prophets of Israel, I remind you, do not condemn ritual. They condemn any ritual that is divorced from morality; quarantined from inclusion, severed from service.
And they condemn it in the strongest language, as an offense to God.
The Torah and its traditions are tools designed to render the invisible visible in our midst. The God of Israel bids us to see those who are unseen and ignored in our presence so that we may all feast together at God's table.
Then, and only then, will we fulfill the Torah's mandate of redeeming the captive.
Then, and only then, will we refrain from making ourselves into idols of stone.
Then, and only then, will we truly observe Sabbath, of rest and wholeness.
Only then, will God's sanctuary be rebuilt.
"Ani Adonai - I God." We will find God only when we are able to see each Ani - each individual - who stands before us as an eruption of God into the world.
That is our task. And this is my charge to you.
Shabbat Shalom!