TO DO OR NOT TO DO? – THAT IS THE (JEWISH) QUESTION
Many people are hyper-active. I think I’m probably one of them – but that’s slightly misleading: while I do rush around from task to task and from place to place – the rabbinate is one of the best career options for hyper-active Jews – and enjoy walking and swimming when I’m not working, most of my activity happens in my brain. It was many years ago now – at least forty; when I began studying for my ‘o levels’ – that I discovered that I suffer from a chronic condition known as ‘sitz fleish’ – a Yiddish expression roughly translated as ‘bottom power’: One of the reasons why I have a bad back is that I have a worrying capacity to sit for ages and ages so utterly immersed in what I’m doing that I not only forget the passing hours, I forget to move at all. And so it is that when I eventually rouse myself and try to get out of my chair, I have to carefully and painfully, unbend myself and gently flex my stiffened muscles and joints…
Okay, so I am a little peculiar… but my tendency to live more in my head than in my body is, nevertheless, a version of hyper-activity; a tendency to do rather than to be; to act and make and create, rather than, simply to be and apprehend; to sit and stare, empty of thought. Could this be a Jewish malaise? And if it is, might it help to explain why the most-popular counter-religious choice for Jewish people during the past few decades has been Buddhism?
If hyper-activity is a Jewish malaise than the blue-print for it may be found in this week’s Torah portion, parashat T’rumah, which launches into the theme of the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and occupies the greater part of the remaining portions of the Book of Exodus – five in all, extending from Exodus chapter 25 through chapter 40. Until the advent of the establishment of the state of Israel, sixty-one years ago, Jews have not been particularly known for our building expertise, but that’s because we lost the skill during centuries of persecution, when we were barred from the skilled trades, and restricted largely to the occupations associated with buying and selling and money-lending. The Torah reminds us that the very first thing we did as a newly-formed people in the wilderness, fresh from the encounter with the Eternal, was turn our hands to building. The Hebrew language is very concise. As I’ve mentioned on other occasions, while writing in the English language often involves multiplying words, writing in Hebrew has the opposite tendency – to repeat key words, again and again. And so, if you turn to T’rumah, you will find that in the account of the construction of the Mishkan, the verb asah, consisting of the root consonants, Ayin, Sin and Hei, meaning both ‘to do’ and ‘to make’, is used again and again. From the moment that the text declares at Exodus chapter 25, verse 8: V’asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham – ‘Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’, the verb asah, is repeated over and over: ‘V’asu – And they shall make an ark of acacia wood’ (:10)… ‘V’asita – And you shall make poles of acacia wood’ (:13)… ‘V’asita – And you shall make an ark-cover of pure gold’ (:17) – and so it goes on for every element of the construction and every utensil, and for all the furnishings; in fact the verb asah recurs two hundred times in the Mishkan narrative (Nehama Leibowitz, 1981, p.475).
This repetition of doing-making in the account of the construction of the Mishkan conveys a powerful message about what it means to be a Jew – not so much to be a Jew but to do Jewishly: and the Torah is only the first building block for this message: all the subsequent sources of Jewish teaching: the rabbinic guides for Jewish life – the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the codes of law, which followed – all reinforce the message: to be a Jew is to do this and that, this and that – only ceasing from all that doing on Shabbat, when, according to the rabbis, Jews are prohibited from engaging in thirty-nine categories of work – all derived from the activities associated with the building of the Mishkan in the wilderness.
To do or not to do? – that is the Jewish question. But if you think that means that Jews are less spiritually-oriented than other peoples, think again. In her Studies in Shemot – Exodus, the foremost teacher of Torah to thousands of students world-wide until her death in 1997, the Israeli scholar, Nehama Leibowitz, citing the work of Martin Buber, draws our attention to the parallels between the account of the building of the Mishkan and the first narrative of Creation at the beginning of B’reishit, the Book of Genesis (1981, pp. 479-482). It is not simply Jews, who are defined as a people by doing; the Eternal is defined by doing: Va-ya’as Elohim et-ha-raki’a – ‘Then God made the firmament’ (1:7); Va-ya’as Elohim et-sh’nei ha-m’o’rot – ‘Then God made the two lights’ (:16); Va-ya’as Elohim et-chayyat ha-aretz – ‘Then God made the living creature(s) of the earth’ (:25). And after six days of making: Va-yar Elohim et-kol-aher asah, v’hinneih, tov m’od – ‘Then God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good’ (:31). Then – to top it all – we read in the concluding verses of the narrative, so hard to translate into English because of the way in which the verb asah is reiterated – so I’ll give you a literal translation (2:1-3):
Then the heavens and the earth were finished and all their host. / God finished on the seventh day his work which he had done (asah); then he ceased on the seventh day from all his work which he had done (asah). / Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it (va-y’kaddeish oto); because on it he ceased (shavat) from all the work which God had created to do – asher bara Elohim la’asot.
According to the Torah, God is the Creator – and as such the Eternal One is also the Doer par excellence – as much a ‘Doing’ as a ‘Being’ – and each human being, created b’tzelem Elohim ‘in the image of God’ (1:27) is also, likewise, a human doing. And that’s the heart of the matter: being and doing. The philosopher, Descartes famously declared, ‘I think therefore I am.’ Jewish teaching seems to urge us to proclaim, ‘I do therefore I am!’
It doesn’t sound quite so lofty! The words ‘do’ and ‘make’ seem so pedestrian in English, and so very far removed from notions of creativity. As the young Karl Marx demonstrates in his powerful work, the 1884 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, the onset of industrialisation, and mass production within Capitalist societies precipitated alienation – the alienation of the worker from the product of their labour. Pre-industrial work centred on creativity; a worker conceived and executed the entire product from start to finish, whether it was a bowl, a table, a bed – and indeed, in some cases, people built their own dwellings. Expressing their creativity, people were able to take pride in their labour. The work of constructing the Mishkan involved this kind of creativity. In the parashah, Ki Tissa, which we will read in two weeks time, we are introduced to B’tzaleil, the chief craftsman, with these words – at Exodus chapter 31, verses 2-5:
See, I have called by name B’tzaleil, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Y’hudah; / and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of work, / to devise skilful works, to work – literally, la’asot ‘to do’ – in gold, and in silver, and in brass, / and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to do (in) all manner of work – la’asot b’chol m’lachah.
Ru’ach Elohim ‘the spirit of God’: creativity is spiritual; a way in which we express our essence, and our unique nature as human beings-doings, as images of the Divine. And the language here directly echoes that used of God at the end of the first creation narrative (Genesis 2:1-3), where, as we saw a moment ago, we find in three short verses three references to m’lachto asher asah – ‘his work which he had done’, and where the narrative closes with the word, la’asot – ‘to do’.
From the Torah onwards, it is clear that doing has been our primary response to our experience of the Eternal. And so we read towards the end of last week’s portion, Mishpatim, when the text turns from concerns of civil law back to the narrative of the Divine Revelation at Mount Sinai, that the people responded to the words of the Eternal by saying na’aseh – ‘we will do’ (Exodus 24:3;7). Doing is spiritual. That is not to say that some of us don’t do too much, and that for many people in modern societies, what they do has become cut off from who they are. Many people – like me – probably would benefit from being more and doing less. But from a Jewish perspective, ultimately, there is no conflict between ‘doing’ and ‘being’ – because to do is to be and to be is to do; what excessive doers probably need more than anything else is to pause to reflect on the endless ‘to do’ list that dominates our lives and acknowledge and celebrate our creativity. This is, after all, one of the central purposes of Shabbat – to cease from work in honour of our labour, and in order to refresh our creative energies before beginning again. May this Shabbat be such a time of renewal for each one of us. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut
28th February 2009 – 4th Adar 5769