Not in Heaven

Deuteronomy 30:11-14

יא כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם--לֹא-נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ, וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא.	11 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off.
יב לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם, הִוא: לֵאמֹר, מִי יַעֲלֶה-לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה.	12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?'
יג וְלֹא-מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם, הִוא: לֵאמֹר, מִי יַעֲבָר-לָנוּ אֶל-עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה.	13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?'
יד כִּי-קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, מְאֹד: בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ. {ס}	14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

When I read these passages from last week's torah portion, I was struck by the difficulty in reading them. One simple reading is that we are able to do all of God's commandments, that they require no extraordinary effort, no supernatural intervention to fulfill, but each and every one of us is able to fulfill them. The other part of this reading is that we each need to do it and not wait for anyone else to do it for us. We should not wait for someone else to go to Heaven to fulfill the commandments, but we should be able to do it ourselves, that is, that it is doable by all of us.

That is the crux of the difficulty I had with the passage, does it mean that all of us should be able to go up to heaven ourselves? Are we all mystics to ascend and receive our commandments from God ourselves? Or does it mean that we don't need to ascend at all, that everything is right here already? And, in a very Jewish way, the thing we are supposed to receive when we ascend are words that we can hear. Or another possible reading is that we are not commanded to do anything that is out of our reach - each of us does according to their ability, though determining that would be a difficult task.

My sense is that the traditional view is that everything is already given to us, and all the commandments are already written down, so there is no need to go to heaven to get anything else. My desire is that it means Judaism is very flat, that there is no hierarchy, and everyone can fulfill all of the commandments. But that's not really Judaism. In the temple days, the Cohanim did the sacrifices and entered the holy of holies and clearly were elevated above the rest of the people. Since then, we've elevated the rabbi's above the rest, though in an interesting way. The rabbis earned their rank by their learning: the more knowledgeable and learned they were, the higher they were regarded.

In the Hasidic world, the rabbi was also a tzaddik who went to higher levels than others, and was venerated for it. In Morgenstern's latest pamplet he says that people should try to be near a tzaddik during Rosh Hashanna because the tzaddik is at a higher level and will help lift them up during the high holy days. One problem is that a tzaddik is not always created by his learning and intellectual ability. Spiritual ability and academic knowledge are not the same thing. Working on my view that the spiritual activities of Judaism include study, it makes sense that someone can be very learned which leads to great spiritual ability, but it doesn't always follow. Which then poses the question of how to know a tzaddik when one sees one?

Getting back to the text, another possible reading is that we each have gifts which allow us to connect with God. So when the baker bakes, if that is his gift, he connects to God while baking. Likewise, if the doctor's gift is healing, then she is connecting to God when she is working with patients. But the text talks about specific people who are able to connect with God and words emerge that we can hear and base our actions on them. This is a very specialized gift: the ability to sail into the spiritual world and return with words which enable us to do God's will.

At one point, while working on patients, I would see scenes from movies. I assumed for awhile that I was just day-dreaming during a treatment and didn't put much stock in them. After awhile though, I began to realize that the scenes were connected to my patients and what was going on with them. I realized that I was watching a lot of movies at that point in my life, and the stories that I was hearing were how I was interfacing with the spiritual world - they were the clothes the spiritual visions took. As I study more Judaism, I'm finding that my insights are coming more and more in the form of Jewish texts and metaphors.

People who spend all day, every day studying must receive their insight in the form of words. When Morgenstern goes into his trance state at the Tish, he speaks and brings insight from the spiritual world. In this way, text study defines the spiritual experience that Jews have. A problem is that people's gifts are so varied and widespread that only a small percentage of people will have the gift to experience the spiritual world through words. Religious Judaism, in the past, had a lot more flexibility regarding this as it put value on people's working lives, so that the baker who find God in bread can bake. But these days, in Jerusalem, the value in only on education. There are scores of people who spend their lives in Yeshiva, and the value is that anyone who can do that, should. For those who's gift is words, that's great, though for others, it's very limiting.

All of which brings us back to the original text. To me, the more important part tells us that we should not ask someone else to go to heaven for us, we should go there ourselves. If our path to God is through words, then we need to study and pray with words so those shape our spiritual experience. Then we will find the words on our mouths and in our hearts. We need not rely on anyone else to do it for us, as it's all inside of us.