The parapet

A good friend told me that my posting on dangers of Tylenol didn't seem to fit in with what this blog is all about.

That, of course, raises the important question of just what this blog is about. When I started it , I said that I expected the exact shape of it to arise as a work in progress as it went on. Clearly, Torah (along with chaplaincy and chaplaincy education) has become a central concern of the blog as it has developed over (just the) last few weeks. That reminds me of what one of my teachers in rabbinical school , Rabbi Ed Feinstein, taught us: everything that comes out of your mouth [or into a blog!!] as a rabbi is rabbinic speech. And you thus need to judge everything you say to others by the standards of rabbinic speech.

What then is rabbinic speech? Well, one of Rabbi Feinstein's requirements is that it "has a text." Specifically, a Holy text from the Jewish tradition.

Now, I have to admit that hardly everything that comes out of my mouth has a holy text in it!! . . . But Rabbi's Feintein's point has much validity. I probably need to consider everything I post on this blog to be rabbinic speech. And that, therefore, everything should have a text -- or some other kind of Torah -- associated with it.

So, I think my friend was very right. The Tylenol posting didn't fit on this blog. Not that the subject didn't fit -- in the spirit of אף עד כאן , I would say that a concern about something that causes people hurt and pain (a concern raised by my Tylenol post, for example) certainly is Torah and belongs on this blog. But there needs to be something that marks it more specifically as Torah.

So, the most obvious text that fits with my concern about Tylenol is definitely the parapet (Deut. 22:8):

כִּי תִבְנֶה בַּיִת חָדָשׁ, וְעָשִׂיתָ מַעֲקֶה לְגַגֶּךָ; וְלֹא-תָשִׂים דָּמִים בְּבֵיתֶךָ, כִּי-יִפֹּל הַנֹּפֵל מִמֶּנּוּ.

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof. So that you will not bring down blood upon your house when someone fell from it.

A parapet is a low wall that would keep someone from falling from the roof.

I need to take a little aside here to say something about the nature of Judaism . . . and why I love it so much. And how it is truly fundamentally different than (our sibling faith) Christianity. . . . . because this very text is just the kind of text that Christianty turned its back on (when it made it's New Testament, or new covenant/ברית with God) . . . and it's just the kind of text that makes me love my faith tradition so much. . . It's just the kind of text that is in the spirit of the words of Rabbi Akiva's students -- even this far? Even this far, our master? Does Torah -- and its daily and sometimes mundane laws and commandments -- extend even this far?

The answer, both I and Akiva say, is "yes". Yes, even this far . Torah goes everywhere. Even into how you build your roof. We Jews have kept the law. We are proud to remain a faith of law and not one that is belief and love-centered like Christianity is. Like (our other sibling faith) Islam, we value law and obedience as well. Proudly.

The parapet verse comes from one of the weekly Torah readings -- parshat Ki Teitzei (Deut. 21:10-25:19). While Christians seem to hold that the 10 Commandments is the main lawgiving in the bible, we Jews stick with the much more detailed lawgivings of this parsha and the one other great lawgiving in the Torah -- and the one that comes _after_ the 10 Commandments -- parshat Mishpatim (Ex. 21:1-24:18).

These two parshas contain laws on some of the most mundane things, especially about business dealings. Chapter 22 -- in which our verse is found -- starts out with the seemingly mundane commands to return to your fellow things that they have lost and even to go out of your way to go after their livestock should you see them wandering away.

American law -- with its obsession with individual rights -- almost never requires one to go out of one's way to prevent another's economic loss; if you see someone's barn burning down, you have zero obligation under American law to even call the fire department.

We Americans, however, do seem to be slowly, yet surely, starting to see the wisdom of an obligation to go out of one's way to prevent another's physical injury as Jewish law has since the time of our verse about the parapet. Our ancestors knew that we had to be required to do things to prevent physical injury -- the spilling of blood -- of others. Thus, the requirement to build the parapet.

We in America, however, don't seem to have fully understood this ancient wisdom. We are still -- again with our obsession with individual rights -- reluctant to legally require anything of anybody. We prefer to use the threat of lawsuits to encourage people to take steps to prevent physical injury on their property. It's an ugly and expensive system that fails to distribute justice equally. Some injured people receive nothing to compensate them, while others receive windfall amounts. Some property owners are influenced by this to create adequate safety conditions on their property. Others do nothing. Nobody wins.

One of those property owners who do not seem to see the wisdom of the ancients are the manufacturers of Tylenol. They have a drug that needs a parapet. It's not that Tylenol should be taken off the market -- anymore than people should be banned from building roofs. It's that it's too easy with Tylenol for someone to slip off and accidentally injure -- or kill -- themselves. The articles I cited show that between 20 and 25% of all liver failure cases in America are from accidental overdoses of Tylenol. Accidental.

This is a drug that hardly anyone is aware is dangerous at all. People think it's as safe as aspirin. It's not. It's incredibly easy to accidentally overdose. The manufacturers of Tylenol need to finally admit that and -- in partnership with government -- come up with a way of preventing these deaths.

The Torah says they have to.

אף עד כאן (even this far?)

. . . it's a reference to the story of the death of Rabbi Akiva, and to the final words he uttered as he was being murdered at the hands of those who tried to destroy the Jews and their love of Torah. It's a story that has deep meaning for me and that deeply shapes how I understand Judaism and my own faith and work (and, in particular, why I think this blog is part of my Torah, too).

The story of his death is but one of many stories about Akiva. He was part of that great generation of Rabbis who figured out a way to preserve Judaism without the great Temple that was heart and center of Jewish life before the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. He supported the last great revolt (around 130 CE) against the Romans. The Talmud tells us (Brachot 61b) that at one point the Romans decreed that the Jews could no longer busy themselves with the Torah. Akiva was not afraid. He boldly defied this decree and brought together public gatherings of people to study Torah.

One day the Romans arrested him for this and brought him out for execution. It was the time of day for reciting the Shema. Despite the fact that he was being tortured terribly, Akiva recited the prayer. His students were stunned:

רבינו, עד כאן
Master, even this far!?!?!?!

Akiva's response to his students amazes me. In this terrible moment, he not only finds the strength to follow his religious practice, but he is able to show love for his students by teaching them one last lesson of Torah. Some words of the Shema have always troubled him, he says -- what does it mean to say בכל נפשך, with all your soul you should love God?

Akiva says it means, even if God would take my soul I should love and obey God. Even in the moment of death. Even in the most extreme condition that a human can find oneself in, that place is still the place for Torah. Its place is everywhere. That is the great lesson Akiva teaches. And that is the inspiration I find in it -- that the place of Torah is everywhere. It is in everything we do. It is not something that we do when we walk into a House of Worship or when we are in the presence of a clergy person. It goes everywhere.

There is a famous story about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He was known as a man very careful about observing Jewish law and ritual, certainly the kind of man who would be in synagogue on Shabbat and who would _not_ be walking long distances on Shabbat. And, yet, there he was one morning marching in a civil rights march with Martin Luther King. Someone asked him how he could not be in synagogue. He answered, "I'm praying with my feet."

Heschel was not saying that going to synagogue and following Jewish law were not important; just that they are not enough. There are other things the Torah calls us to do. He was saying that on this particular day the Torah called him to be somewhere else. This, too -- fighting injustice by supporting civil rights -- was a place of Torah. Even this far. Torah is not just in synagogue. It's out here in the world as well. In what we do in the world. In the way we relate to our neighbor.

Heschel was a deeply spiritual man and one of the greatest Jewish theologians of the 20th century. The story of his civil rights march also teaches us that, to be spiritual, an act does not have to be all dressed up in some kind of explicitly spiritual clothing. On that day, just moving his feet was spiritual -- was prayer. He didn't need to speak any words, or talk about God. Moving his feet was spiritual because of what motivated him to do it. It came out of his faith, out of his love and understanding of Torah and what Torah commands of us. It came out of the deepest reaches of his heart. Out of the parts of his heart that reached out beyond himself and his personal wants and concerns to the world and humanity as a whole.

I think of this often in my work as a hospital chaplain. So much of what I do is "just talking" talking to people, or sometimes just standing silently with them around their dying loved one. I never question whether this, too, is spiritual, whether this, too, is Torah. I think of Rabbi Akiva. I know that the Torah extends even this far. All this is spiritual.

Akiva's story also teaches us a lot about the importance of knowing who we really are, and of standing by that. Before his arrest, Akiva was asked by someone who saw him teaching Torah in defiance of the Roman order if he was not afraid of the authorities?

Akiva answered with a mashal, with a parable:

To what is this matter (with the Romans) similar? A fox was once walking along
a river. He saw fishes moving in groups from place to place. He asked, "why are
you fleeing?"

"From the nets that men cast upon us."

The fox replied, "would you like to come up on the dry land and we will dwell together here as
our ancestors once did?"

"The fish said, "Aren't you the one that they call the cleverest of animals? You are not clever, but foolish!! If we are afraid in the place in which we live, how much more so in the place in which we would die"

That is, the Torah is to the Jew like water is to fish. It is life itself. It is the air we breath. Things from the world around us may hold us in fear as we study Torah. But how much more so we would be in fear if we were to abandon it.

Again, I see the wisdom of this so often in my work in the hospital. For the people who have a Torah -- who have some kind of faith or other source of spiritual support -- there is much less despair from an illness. There may still be fear and despair -- few can face cancer and other serious illnesses without suffering some fear and despair -- but it will be much less. They will be much stronger.

We never know when the day may come suddenly -- as it did with Rabbi Akiva -- that we may die. Will we know who we are when that day comes? Will we know what we care about most? Will we be crippled by fear, or comforted by the belief that things of importance and permanance will live on when our time is over?

I hope that this blog will help me to take my faith even that far, that it will help me to learn more about who I am, about what means the most to me and how I can best serve God. I hope this blog will help me to share some of that Torah with others. I hope my Torah will extend even this far.