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KEE TAVO & THE MONTH OF ELUL: PRESCRIPTIONS FOR RIGHT LIVING

by Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman

September 8 , 2006 (15th of Elul, 5766)

I’m not really certain how much the drama of what Moses arranges for the Israelites speaks to us today, but it should. In Kee Tavo, our parasha for this week, Moses tells the people that when they cross over the Jordan, they are to set up large stones and coat them with plaster. Then they are to write on them the laws that are found in the Book of Deuteronomy. It’s a great object lesson, setting these important religious and societal strictures in the minds and hearts of the people. It would serve as a record for their age and, were these unique structures to have survived in their natural form, for ours. They did survive in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy we have today, but the actual, physical columns have long since disappeared. As an aside, one wonders what of our culture will survive three thousand years hence: our CDs and DVDs may be the only record we leave behind. One shutters to make the comparison between what Moses sought to preserve and what may remain of ours in.

But what Moses stages next is truly an incredibly theatric and creative event. He has the tribes face each other on the tops of two opposing mountains, Gerizim and Ebal. From Mount Gerizim, the tribes of Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin will call out blessings. Then, from Mount Ebal, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali will respond with curses. The blessings are what follow from keeping and observing God’s laws; the curses are what will follow disobeying those self same laws.

Throughout the Bible, but especially here in Deuteronomy and in the prophets, the emphasis on Israel’s loyalty to God commandments is paramount. The people’s fate depends upon their strict adherence to the laws that Moses understands must under-gird the society; in contrast, he knew that corruption, graft, and bribery leads to inevitable breakdown and chaos. The line that leads from one to the other, from not observing the mitzvot to the destruction of society was clear to the ancient seers of our people.

Only in our own day does that clear connecting line seem to have grown faint. I have no doubt that many of us understand that seediness in government and scandal among our leaders isn’t the best way of running our social systems; however, I don’t think that many-- if any-- of us here tonight believe that it will be God rather than man-made events that will bring us down.

In forcing the hand of God back deeper into the backdrop, we, in effect, are able to take more control of our lives and realize that the decisions we make as citizens are ever more important because the responsibility falls squarely on our shoulders and not on God’s, as it were.

But if, for example, we take a look at present day Israel, we see a country, many of whose elected officials seem to have lost all propriety over taking bribes and allowing themselves to either peddle or, themselves, be subject to political pressures or influence. The Prime Minister of the country is being charged with influence peddling; the President, with sexual assault. Cabinet ministers seem not to be able to adhere to principle but are driven by ambition, greed and perfidy. Too many members of the Knesset have been removed due to official scandal or indiscretions, and there seems to be no regard for the damage that the country’s leaders are doing both to the faith that citizens have a right to have in their governmental structures, and to a standard that any nation’s leaders should set as models for the rest of the nation, most of all, the children who deserve to grow up with some measure of honor and decency to which to aspire. For those who understand—who really get it--- Israel is also said to mirror the United States, lagging behind what happens in this country by a decade or so.

Much as I sometimes question the influence and assertiveness of the religious elements playing any role in government in this country, it is that sense of moral outrage that we bring which acts as a fourth arm in addition to the three branches of government, the Judicial, the Legislative and the Executive which helps to assure us that those who would participate in the scandalous are held responsible for their behaviors. To some degree, although I have come to feel the same way about the run away media in this country, they serve the same purpose as a fifth column (no pun intended) when it comes to exposing the tricks, evils and crimes that might otherwise go unnoticed and result in a government that might otherwise be wholly bought and purchased by lobbyists, the wealthiest among us, and foreign influences.

This is the month of Elul. This is the time when we each should be involved in our own cheshbon ha-nefesh, accounting of our own souls. You could easily ask me why you should even bother? After all, if God is not to be the direct source of justice in either our world, national, or individual lives, then what good does this exercise do?

Personally I am not looking for God to swoop down, as it were, and punish Jack Abramoff and his cohorts who bribed and cheated their way into getting what their clients were paying them to get from an all too corrupt few in Congress. I am convinced, however, that somewhere and somehow the formula that Moses was applying and emphasizing to the Israelites was every bit as critically instructive for them as it should be for us. This month we should be going inside ourselves to gage the positives and negatives of how we have related to others and to our own potentials over this past year. The process ought to be the beginning of something very therapeutic and restorative. And perhaps we won’t engage in this process because God necessarily wants us to; but because it will lead us back to our living better, more satisfying, more enjoyable lives.

Like a chiropractor’s aligning the bones of his or her patient’s spine, this cheshbon ha-nefesh, this personal, introspective alignment we ought to be doing at this time of year can help us get back in touch with our better natures, to a more congruent style of living which recaptures, returns or retains some of our youthful idealism; perhaps, it can bring us better mental health because we shall be able to escape the dissonance with which we are living as our personal Mount Gerizim is being assaulted at by our Mount Ebal.

I do not think that one necessarily has to attribute the guilt and the feelings of living cursed…those “oh this is going to be a bad day…week…month…year” thoughts, if we are willing to do this kind of life critical work and do it seriously. While it may not save us from every trouble, disease or calamity, it will certainly make us more resilient and more capable of handling those things if, God forbid, they land in our lives.

Whatever created us with these emotions; whatever urges us to live more constructively, more creatively, more hope-fully; more intentionally…and I believe that it is, indeed, God; has inspired a Judaism which, properly observed, has declared this month, the month of Elul, a month of soul-preparation. God has commanded us this time not only to write our New Year cards, but to prepare our souls so that they may be written on for the coming year.

Pardon a computer analogy, but it is time for us to de-fragment our own hard drives, our souls, to gather and compartmentalize those elements of our programs which contain errors and flaws, and to begin to apply the fixes that will culminate, in a few short weeks, in our coming before the King of Kings with a readout of just where we are on our life’s path, accounting for the space we’ve utilized, asking for space we wish to have left, so that we can be and produce the best products that we possibly can.

Rather than less than those Moses instructed in his day, I believe that our modern society needs this process more these days. With all that we have swirling daily around us, we need this time out, this period of preparation, to re-track and re-position ourselves on the pathways our God would have us on. Let us use this run up time to the High Holidays wisely, so that we might better enjoy the many blessing that are in our lives and be able to respond better, more maturely, and more responsibly to those negatives, those curses, as it were, that sometimes arise in our lives.

In Elul, the shofar is sounded each weekday morning to awaken us to life’s potentials and to our need to identify what is wrong in our lives and to align ourselves anew with all that is admirable, decent, kind and good, so that we can return to ourselves, our families and our God cleansed of sin and newly ready, indeed, eagar, to face life.

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