Thoughts on Shabbat Pesach Day 7, 5785
Rabbi Menachem Mirski
A jealous boyfriend catches his girlfriend whispering quietly into her cell phone very late one night. “Are you cheating?” her angry boyfriend asks. “Is there somebody else?” The girlfriend laughs and replies, “Do you really think I’d still be dating you if there was someone else?”
Frankly, had this indeed happened in real life, these young people must have lived in a pretty lonely place – in some very distant and desolate province, village or small island community, for example. Another place that comes to my mind at this moment is… the Garden of Eden??
One of the things we know about our God from the Torah is that He is jealous, that He is El Kana, namely, that he doesn’t tolerate other gods. It is directly expressed in words of our parasha for today:
No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts; for you must not worship any other god, because יהוה, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God. (Exodus 34:13-14)
El Kana can also mean “Impassioned God” or “Zealous God” but let me elaborate on the first interpretation that speaks about Divine jealousy. In Judaism, Divine jealousy is not seen as a negative emotion like human jealousy, but rather a righteous Divine zeal for His people and His own glory. It is often seen as a manifestation of God’s love and commitment to His covenant with Israel. It highlights the demand for exclusive worship and faithfulness, emphasizing the uniqueness and holiness of our God, as well as uniqueness of our relationship with the Holy One. This relationship requires unequivocal commitment on our side as well.
The prophetic metaphor presenting our relationship with God as being married to Him (like in Megillat Shir HaShirim we traditionally read on Shabbat during Pesach) is basically an expression of the same concept: our relationship with God is fundamental and like marriage requires a complete commitment and exclusivity. We are not allowed to go back and forth between different religions, philosophies etc. whenever we feel like.
What happens if we go back and forth, and explore all intellectual and spiritual possibilities given to us? Well, there will be some good and some bad things coming from that kind of attitude. We may learn a lot of new, interesting things. But the more often we change our interests, the more shallow our experience and knowledge becomes. Overall, it may work, and it does work for certain people, but only temporarily. At some point we have to focus and commit to something, if we don’t, it may introduce too much chaos into our lives, which may generate some unpleasant consequences for us. Figuratively speaking, we may end up like those extremely attractive women or men who become unable to form a love relationship with anyone because nobody is ‘good enough’ for them.
Therefore, our tradition teaches that we have to be committed and be consequential in all our commitments, starting from the highest possible one – the one toward God. Having a committed, stable, unwavering relationship with God puts true order in our life and pushes chaos away. And while we crave for and need sometimes some chaos or distraction, we don’t need too much of it. This unwavering relationship with the Holy One bestows upon us meaning, guidelines, guardrails and makes us connected with the endless source of spiritual inspiration. Following our loyal and exclusive relationship with God we are expected to form stable, loyal and committed relationships with other people – our spouses, friends and community. This is yet another instance in which our religion teaches us to limit our commitments. We will be rewarded for this: our experience and knowledge, in all realms – practical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual – will be much deeper if we limit our choice and be fully committed to the choices we make.
This goes completely against our contemporary culture that incessantly promotes variety, infinite number of choices in terms of literally everything and, as I said, there may be many great things about it. But as beautiful as it sounds, despite indisputable advantages of our freedom of choice, of the entire variety that is offered to us, trying to explore everything unlivable in the long run. It causes anxiety and it may even cause depression. And don’t worry, the situation is going to get much better and at the same time much worse with the advancement of AI and all other technologies. The variety of all kinds of things produced by human beings will double and triple, and the choice between them may become more and more difficult.
There are 2 billion 44 million Muslims in the world as for today and this number is growing every day. One of the reasons Islam has been SO successful as a religion is that it leaves people with a relatively limited number of moral, practical and spiritual choices at the same time building a coherent, relatively simple and clear vision of the world, moral reward and punishment. If you are looking for the answer why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world that offers SO MANY choices, that’s probably still the number one answer.
But our tradition too, though in a profoundly different way, teaches us to focus and tells us that we need to commit to a limited number of things, in order to grow and find fulfillment in our lives. There is always a blessing, a reward attached to it. In order to truly succeed in life, we need to separate the wheat from the chaff, and be focused and consequential in every choice we make.
Chag Pesach Sameach,
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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