Sanctify Yourself!
Is there such a thing as Jewish Existentialism? Could we define anyone as an existentialist Jew? The answer is yes, and the person considered the pioneer is Yosef Haim Brenner.
Half a century before Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus would become the names synonymous with existentialist philosophy and literature, Y. H. Brenner embodied existentialist thought and was the author of countless groundbreaking works of literature of that exact kind.
I'm highlighting Brenner today, because our Torah portion this week, Vayakhel-Pekudei, embodies existentialist thought in its clear transfer of responsibility from God to people.
In a complete flip to the story of creation, our portion begins on the 7th day, with the Shabbat and its holiness, its sacredness, its boundary between what is holy and what is not. But here the realm of God ends and the domain of men and women begins.
The first three verses alone are dedicated to the Shabbat. After that, the entire portion not only specifies the work of people but is full of descriptions of the capability of people to take ownership over their creation.
Expressions like נְדִ֣יב לִבּ֔וֹ - generosity, חֲכַם־לֵ֖ב - wisdom, נָדְבָ֨ה רוּח֜וֹ - kind spirit, בְּחׇכְמָ֛ה בִּתְבוּנָ֥ה וּבְדַ֖עַת וּבְכׇל־מְלָאכָֽה׃ - craftsmanship based on knowledge and wisdom, - וְלַחְשֹׁ֖ב מַֽחֲשָׁבֹ֑ת - thoughtfulness and so on.
Those expressions describe both men and women who are entrusted with creation that is not only essential but also aesthetic, beautiful and thoughtful.
This opposes the Promethean myth, in which creation and independence (fire) were stolen from the gods by a human who was punished for it. In Jewish myth, it is God himself who fills his people with talent to create and gives them tools and independence.
This transfer of power, if you will, according to existentialist thought, is exactly what fills the human heart with the tremendous burden of responsibility and with the anxiety which comes with freedom.
The Judaism that we practice today with different levels of observance, is the Rabbinic Interpretation of the Torah throughout the first millennium, from Mishna to Gemara to Halacha. Our sages determined early on that the legal authority in interpreting law is in the hands of the people. How far does one’s interpretation go and how much liberty do we actually have in interpreting Torah? This is what still divides us today.
Brenner is one of the Jewish thinkers who is most associated with secularism and the creation of a “new Jew.”
He was born in 1881 in what is present day Ukraine to a Litvak family in a small town led by a Hasidic Rabbi. Needless to say that his upbringing was immersed in the learning of Jewish texts.
Brenner was drawn more and more to other sources of wisdom and was kicked out of his yeshiva. He then began a gradual distancing from religious life, became a socialist and joined the Bund. Around that time, he was forcefully drafted into the Russian Army during the Russia-Japan War and managed to escape. He was caught and imprisoned but Bund members managed to kidnap him and smuggle him to London.
It was in London where he began to write and publish. He wrote, edited and published a Hebrew periodical called Hame’orer (The Awakener) out of which I chose to bring a text which today is canonized in Israel, a text that I find powerful and inspiring and which embodies what could be called Jewish Existentialism.
This text not only finds holiness in a secular way of life, it is also a much-needed wake-up call to a Jewish community that reverts inward and that is too immersed in fear to awaken its endless power of creation.
“On this day – when ignorance governs the shrines, and the words of the Torah have diminished, and like the blind, we grope in darkness, and skepticism eats up heart and soul, and black bitterness pours out on everything, and sadness increases, and the pillars fall, and faith in heaven on earth collapses, and the lonely ones, the abstanents, wander to seek God – and they will not find it…
On this day – behold, I come to you, a brother in need.
And not to presume before you on the paved paths, not to be puffed up with my fixed dogmas, not to your command: this is the one and only path, tread it and you will find rest!
For you will know no rest with me, brother, nor peace nor pleasure.
For I come to awaken you, brother, to awaken you to say: Ask, son of man, for the paths of the world, ask, where is the way, where?
I come to awaken you and to elevate your thought; to elevate it and expand it and strengthen it so that you will not be lost in its difficult searches.
And thus it will be said: "Hear, son of Israel, hear, son of sorrow, lift up your head, lift up your head – and the gates of the world will be lifted. No rest and no self-deception, be whatever you may be, do not fear any consequences, whatever they may be. No trace of falsehood and tenderness of heart. Away, clouds come out of the cavern of the rock. Remove the Godly palm from you. Reach even to the mist, ascend to the grove, see the face of being. Attain its essence, its glory. Sanctify yourself!…”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ye’ela Rosenfeld
