Faces in the Mirror

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach,

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

[This was the introduction to my column for America OnLine from 1997-2002;
I will rewrite it shortly, but the reasons why I am writing, and what it says about my perspective, still applies.]


A distinguished teacher and leader of our movement, a brilliant writer and an inspiration to me, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who was in Sudbury, Massachusetts for many years, tells the following story:

One of a rabbi's happier jobs is making guest appearances in thecongregation's pre school. A few years ago...their teacher asked if I wouldgive the children a tour of the prayer hall. I decided to save the contentsof the ark...for last. But I lost track of time, and suddenly spied theteacher discreetly signalling from the back of the room that school wasalmost over.  Not wanting to rush through the sacred contents of the ark, I decided to savethem for a special session. I promised the children that the next time wemet I would open the curtains and together we would see what was inside. The teacher later informed me that such a hasty conclusion had generated a heateddiscussion among the little people as to what exactly was in the ark "behind the curtains."  One kid, doubtless a budding nihilist, thought it was empty. Another,apparently a devotee of American television consumer culture, opined thatbehind the curtain was "a brand new car." Another correctly guessed that itheld the scrolls of the Torah. But one kid, the teacher insists, said "You'reall wrong. When the rabbi opens that curtain next week, there will just be a big mirror."
                                                 (excerpted from God was in This Place and I, i did not Know)

A big mirror. In a sense, that Sudbury child's answer is one of the most profound comments about the Torah that I have ever heard. For truly, what we see when we open the ark, when we read the ancient words and gaze at the parchment scroll...are our own faces, our own issues and concerns and feelings.

With any book we read, any movie we see...and, especially with the Torah...we bring ourselves to the reading, the seeing, the understanding. Without us, it is not there. And that, for Jews as well as for those of other faiths, is precisely the power of the Bible.

It has always been so. We are soon to celebrate the cycle of Torah, the end and beginning, the completion and the commencement of the longest running syndicated re run in world history (only with this show, the rights to it are there for any takers.)

Simchat Torah leads us to ask a simple question. Why the Jews? Why were we chosen to receive the Torah?

In one place in our tradition, we read a story of how God offered the Torah first to all the other nations, but they asked what was in it, and when God said: "Do not kill," the Ishmaelites said, uh, sorry God, but we live by the sword, maybe next time, okay?  And when God told the Moabites, "Do not commit adultery," they respectfully replied that they, too, were not interested. Only when God approached the Jews did we reply without even asking about the contents "Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hearken."


Why the Jews? Why did we receive the Torah? Because everyone else had their chance, and they blew it.

But in answer to the very same question, there is yet another story. There is a different tradition that tells us how, at Mt. Sinai, God lifted the mountain up out of the ground, held it above the people who were trembling
below, and simply said: "If you accept my Torah, it will go well for you, but if you do not, this will be your burial place." To which the wise Israelites replied: "Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hearken."

Both of these stories answer the same question. Both are reactions to a question the comes from reading in between the lines of the Torah.

But with both stories, we learn as much about the writers of the story as we do about the Bible. The first was a chauvinist, or, at the very least, lived at a time when the non Jews around him (I assume it was a man) were behaving with violence and sexual immorality.

By the time the second story was written, however, the writer assumed that there were no inherent differences between Jews and non Jews; we happened to be the ones God chose to receive the Torah, but not by any inherent qualification on our part.

Another classical example. "And God built Eve from the rib of the man." Why the rib? To teach (as with one interpretation) that women are like bone, hard and inflexible? Or to show that a woman is from the side of a man not the head to rule above him, nor the foot to serve below him, but the side, to walk together, hand in hand and side by side, equal in every way.

In these different reactions to the very same verse, we can guess the gender, the inclinations and the general time period (ancient vs. quite modern) of the person doing the reacting.

In studying the Torah, we do not learn one single truth. We bring ourselves to the text, and we see ourselves reflected in it. It is not just talking to us. It is talking about us, and through us.

In studying the Torah, we discover ourselves.

That is precisely the goal of Jewish study. It is something that the synagogues in our community offer in a high quality way: the opportunity to peer into the past and discover the concerns of the present, to look at our
ancestors and see...that they are us and we are them on down through an endless chain that links and binds the generations together.

It is why our tradition teaches that "talmud torah k'neged kulam; studying Judaism is equal to all of the other commandments and customs of our tradition combined...because it will lead to them all."

The opportunities are there. The windows into the past and into our own souls are open for us. In each Bet Midrash, in each house of study, in a path that leads through the classrooms and the chapels, the libraries and social halls there waits for you...the Mirror in the Ark. And we...we who bring ourselves to study, we who see our own souls in the spaces between the words, we are, indeed, the Faces in the Mirror.