Turn It Again: Torah Wisdom for Today
In Pirkei Avot, a book of maxims in the Mishnah, an ancient rabbi, Ben Bag-Bag said about Torah study, “Hafokh bah, va’Hafokh vah, d’khola bah.” Turn it over and over, for everything is in it. For two thousand years, that’s what Jews have done. Here is another turning.
Parshat Vaetchanan 2024
I will be taking a family vacation the last half of August, so this will be the last Turn It Again column until September.
Grace
The very first line of this week’s parashah is spoken by Moses, where he recounts,
“I pleaded with YHVH at that time, saying…” (my translation). The Hebrew word for “I pleaded,” v’etchanan, is fascinating, because it is the reflexive form of the word grace, or chen, in Hebrew.
Because of the emphasis that Christianity has placed on the idea of grace, Jews have often not explored the concept, for it can seem a bit foreign to the Jewish mind. Yet grace appears throughout the Hebrew scriptures. Moreover, there are some beautiful teachings about grace that can provide fascinating perspectives on how to build a meaningful life.
Let’s begin by looking at Rashi, our great French commentator, who states that any word with the root חנן, HNN, indicates an unearned gift. Another French thinker, Chizkuni, notes that the root should actually end with the letter mem, which means free. Grace then, is something freely given and unearned by the recipient. This is very close to the Christian conception, but in Judaism, grace normally appears with two other words, compassion and lovingkindness. These positive traits flow out of and depend upon one another. Moreover, while grace is normally considered to flow from God to humanity, the rabbinic understanding urges that while these are divine traits, they are ones we should emulate. In other words, we also can extend compassion, lovingkindness, and unearned favor on to others. In fact, we often do so without being aware of this.
Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine, elaborates on the notion of grace in intriguing ways. As with other mystically inclined Jewish thinkers, he believes that many of our spiritual illnesses, such as impatience, despair, grief, and disillusionment, arise when we fail to see how the world is filled with divinity. As a consequence, when we feel settled and open to how divinity pulses through creation, we also become conduits of grace so that it shines forth out of us, touching those around us.
A very similar concept can be found in many streams of Buddhist thinking, which doesn’t believe in God. The fact that these two different religious traditions perceive reality in the same way means that believers and atheists alike can attune themselves to life, thereby experiencing how the world is suffused with compassion, lovingkindness, and a myriad of unearned blessings.
It seems so counterintuitive precisely because evolution has tuned us to focus on what is wrong rather than how much is beautifully, touchingly, and astoundingly good. How can this be true in a world full of so much pain and suffering? Yet as with so much, our experiences flow out of what we pay attention to. When we take the rabbinic sages seriously, and better learn how to be vessels of compassion, lovingkindness, and grace, the more we will see how these same qualities reciprocally surround and bathe us. When we are a blessing, the spiritual economy ensures that blessings flow back to us.
The French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, once made a famous wager. In effect, he argued that since one can neither prove nor disprove God’s existence, it is better to live as though there is a God. In a similar fashion, we also can wager on the presence of grace and live accordingly.
