Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst
In
the World to Come we will be held accountable for every pleasure we saw with
our eyes in This World, but chose not to enjoy. (Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin
66d) When I first heard this teaching I imagined God waging a divine
finger and saying: “What about that organic kosher cream puff? I sent you a
cream puff and you didn’t eat it, what were you thinking?”
A
friend’s teacher taught me the full implications of this teaching. My friend
tells the story about having used this quote from the Talmud in an academic paper
he wrote in college. Many years later, after they had become friends, she told him
that when she was reading his paper, she had she just met someone and fallen in
love. Both of them were in their sixties and neither of them expected the
intensity of the pull they felt towards each other at that moment in their
lives. However her boyfriend had just been diagnosed with an advanced cancer
and they both were unsure if it was wise to start a new relationship when it
was unclear how long they would have together.
But
when my friend’s teacher read these ancient words, she realized that it was a
sacred obligation to seize the pleasure of each other's company; even if they
only had one moment together.
My
friend talks about how his teacher’s boyfriend died less than two years after
they met and that this teacher cared for her boyfriend through the last days of
his illness and eased his death through extraordinary acts of kindness and
radical compassion.
The
Jerusalem Talmud tells us that we are accountable for shunned pleasures,
because to ignore pleasure is also to shut ourselves off from the realty of
pain and the obligations of caring for the world and each other.
This
week we begin to read the Torah anew with Parshat
Bereshit.
There
are two primary accounts of the creation of humanity in our portion.
In chapter one Adam is created by
the abstract divine word in the image of God and commanded to have dominion
over the rest of creation.
In chapter two “adam”, the earthling, is created out of the
“adamah,” the dust of the
earth and commanded to till and safeguard the Garden of Eden.
It
is the Adam of chapter two who asks
God for a partner to love and care for.
The
great modern Jewish thinker, Rav Jospeh Soloveitchik, pointed out that the first Adam emphasizes humanity's
creative God-like nature, capable of transforming the world. The second Adam reflects our animal-like
side who seeks to delight in the pleasures of the world: freshly grown produce,
love and companionship.
We
often think about global social justice from the perspective of the Adam of chapter one – we see that the
world is broken and feel compelled to fix it using our creative, domineering
capacity to make change.
However, this way of working alone can easily
lead to a sense of hopelessness. After all, despite how much we do or give, we
know that next year when we come back to Parshat
Bereshit
the chances are high that the world will still need fixing.
An
1880 report on famine in India notes: “There is an abundance of food procurable
even in the worst districts at the worst time… they starve not from the
impossibility of getting food but for the want of money to buy it.” A statement
which is as frustratingly relevant today, as it was 136 years ago.
This
year as we begin the Torah again, let us also think about world change from the
perspective of Adam of chapter 2.
What
if instead of talking about justice work with the language of “what we ought to
do…” we framed it in the language of being drawn to social change because of delighting in our world and its capacity
for transformation?
Yes,
our world and the humanity that lives within it are broken but we are also
startlingly resilient.
The
two sides of human nature described in our parasha cannot be separated.
As
my friend’s teacher realized - to be open to the pleasure of the
fullness of this world is also to be vulnerable to its pain.
To
see and hear each pleasure that our
world offers us naturally leads us to be compelled to care for and protect that world and one another.
In
the coming year, may we take pleasure in our world at the same time as
we expose ourselves to its pain – so that in the World to Come we will not be held accountable for refusing to engage
in the hard long-term work of global
social justice or the divine delight
of an organic, kosher cream puff!
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