Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5785: Motherhood Understood

GOOD MORNING! This upcoming Sunday, May 11th, is known here in the USA as Mother’s Day. According to telecom industry reports, more phone calls are made on this day than any other Sunday of the year; last year Verizon handled 394.2 million calls on Mother’s Day, and customers spent 1.7 billion hours on the phone that day. That sounds like an awful lot of guilt being worked through.

Interestingly enough, Mother’s Day was first conceived as a peacemaking endeavor. Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis (1832-1905) bore more than a dozen children. Most of her children died from diseases such as diphtheria or measles, which were common during her day in the Appalachian area of Virginia, and she worked tirelessly to prevent other women from suffering similar losses. The focus of Jarvis’ work changed when war struck.

The Civil War deeply divided her region. Local soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict, and guerrilla warfare was rampant. Jarvis insisted that the women’s groups she organized help both Confederate and Union troops who were sick or wounded, and she worked to promote peace and unity following the war.

In 1868, despite threats of violence, she organized a “Mother’s Friendship Day” to bring families from both sides of the war together to try to restore a sense of community. She felt that even soldiers who were fighting bitterly would set aside their animosity for the sake of their mothers.

Fascinatingly, today’s Mother’s Day is rooted in the efforts of her daughter Anna who decided to make it her mission to honor her mother’s life work. Anna Jarvis (1864-1948), set out to honor her mother’s legacy by establishing a national Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May, the day her mother had died.

Anna, who never married or had children of her own, did not focus the holiday on peace activism but rather on the idea of honoring one’s own mother. She urged people to write heartfelt letters of gratitude to their mothers (pre-printed cards did not count) and send white carnations. Anna succeeded in her quest for official recognition when President Wilson issued a proclamation of the first national Mother’s Day just before the start of World War I in 1914.  Of course, this story – like many others – has an ironic and sad ending.

Eventually, Anna Jarvis grew discontented as she noted increasing commercialization of the celebration. What she had wanted to be an earnest “holy day” had become, in her eyes, a crass holiday benefiting florists and greeting card companies far more than honoring the mothering work done by women.

Anna was so distraught over the way Americans observed the holiday she had worked so hard to establish that in 1943 she started a petition to have the recognition of Mother’s Day rescinded; an effort she bankrolled. Five years later she died penniless in a sanitarium where, reportedly, her bills were paid by the same greeting card companies and florists she despised.

We all owe an enormous amount of gratitude to our mothers – they wholeheartedly embrace a job in which people’s lives are quite literally at stake, and they are thrust into it with no training or experience. Moreover, it is a job that pays nothing, you cannot quit, and it never really ends. In fact, they only wish for one thing: more restful sleep. Moms do not wish they could sleep like a baby. They wish they could sleep like a dad.

Although Mother’s Day is a secular holiday, it gifts us a real opportunity to reflect upon and honor the role of mothers in our families and in the building of the Jewish nation. According to our sages, the Jewish women in Egypt were consistently able to see past the suffering of the enslavement and chose instead to focus on a vision of building the Jewish people.

When Pharaoh decreed that all the male children be cast into the Nile, Amram the leader of the Jewish people in Egypt, divorced his wife Yocheved. Upon seeing the leader of their generation divorcing his wife, all the men followed suit and divorced their wives (in order to undermine Pharaoh’s decree).

Amram’s daughter Miriam argued with him and pointed out that, “Pharaoh’s decree only applies to the males, but your action means that no females will be born either.” Amram quickly changed his mind and remarried Yocheved. A short time later Moses – who would lead the Jewish people out of Egypt – was born.

This appreciation of motherhood is particularly relevant to this week’s double Torah reading.

“Speak to the Israelites and say to them, I am God. Do not follow in the ways of Egypt where you lived, nor of Canaan where I will be bringing you; do not follow their customs” (Leviticus 18:2-3).

The newly minted Jewish nation is given its own code of ethics and mores by which to live. They are forewarned not to descend morally to the levels of the nations around them, and not to capitulate to their own baser desires. The Torah ends this introduction with a rather odd statement:

“You shall observe my laws and decrees, which a man shall fulfill and live by them. I am God” (Ibid 18:5).

The Talmud concludes from the words “and live by them” the Torah value of prioritizing life, and concludes that we should even violate Shabbat to save a person’s life. Yet this seems to be an odd place for the Torah to teach us this principle. Why does the Torah place a core guiding principle – namely the sanctity of life – here at the end of a warning not to descend into the decadence and immorality of the surrounding nations?

Mankind is absolutely preoccupied with death; either obsessed with actively evading it or obsessed with trying to avoid thinking about it. But at some point in our lives we must come to terms with it. A person is called a mortal (from the Latin mortalis – subject to death) because from the day we are born we are all in the process of dying (the word “murder” comes from the same root).

For millennia, philosophers have argued that man is driven by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. But this is really a superficial understanding. In truth, it is this elongated process of dying that drives most of mankind’s actions. The never-ending search for new and greater pleasures is driven by the desire to feel like one exists. It is one of the main attractions of skydiving and similar activities – the escape from death makes people feel more alive.

The Torah is teaching us that man will obsessively turn to ever increasing decadent and perverse activities to dull the sense of impending non-existence. In 3,500 years, little has changed. Anyone who is paying attention can see it all over in today’s decadent and hedonism-driven society.

The Torah gives us the antidote to this malady. Connecting to the immortal Almighty through the infinity of the Torah is not only a much healthier way to feel a sense of existence, it actually allows us to transcend the physical world and earn a share in the World to Come; ultimately achieving a feeling of true existence. We connect to the eternal existence of our soul through its relationship to the Almighty. This message is further encapsulated in the statement, “You that cleave to the Almighty are alive today!” (Deuteronomy 4:4).

We find in the beginning of Kedoshim (the second Torah portion), “Every man shall revere his mother and father […]” (Leviticus 19:3). The great medieval commentator known as Rashi points out that here the Torah places mother before father, but in the Ten Commandments we find the order reversed, “Honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12), placing mother after father.

The sages explain that children naturally have a closer and more loving relationship with their mother. In the words of the Talmud (Kiddushin 31a) “because she persuades them.” In other words, a mother is constantly looking out for the welfare and emotional wellbeing of her children. They would therefore prioritize their mother when giving honor. The Torah therefore places father before mother when it comes to honoring one’s parents – to highlight the need to focus on the father as well.

So too, since the father’s role is to teach his children Torah values and discipline, a child is naturally given to show him reverence. Therefore, when it comes to respecting one’s parents the Torah prioritizes the need to respect the mother.

To recap, a mother’s role is to give her children a sense of validation – she does this by demonstrating continuous unconditional love. She prioritizes their needs over her own and loves them for who they are, not for what they have done (and often, in spite of what they have done). This unconditional love validates a person’s existence because it gives them the feeling that they matter, provides them with a sense of self, and builds within them healthy self-esteem.

This is why the first woman in history is called Chava; “because she is the mother of all life” (Genesis 3:20). Rashi (ad loc) explains that the name Chava is a derivative of the Hebrew word “chaya – provider of life.” The Torah isn’t merely stating that mothers give birth; it is highlighting that in her role as a mother she provides her children with a sense of existence. So, on this Mother’s Day, take some time to consider all that we owe our mothers – and, if possible, make the call.

Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27

Acharei Mot includes the Yom Kippur service where the Cohen Gadol casts lots to designate two goats – one to be sacrificed, the other to be driven to a place called Azazel after the Cohen Gadol – the High Priest – confesses the sins of the people upon its head. Today it is a very popular epithet in Israel to instruct another person in the heat of an argument to “go to Azazel.” (I don’t believe the intent, however, is to look for the goat.)

The goat sent to Azazel symbolically carried away the sins of the Jewish people. This, I surmise, is the source of the concept of using a ‘scapegoat.’ One thing you can truly give credit to the Jewish people – when we use a scapegoat, at least we use a real goat!

The Torah then proceeds to set forth the sexual laws – who you are not allowed to marry or have relations with. If one appreciates that the goal of life is to be holy, to perfect oneself, and to be as much as possible like God, then he/she can appreciate that it is impossible to orgy at night and be spiritual by day.

The Torah portion of Kedoshim invokes the Jewish people to be holy! It then proceeds with the spiritual directions on how to achieve holiness – closeness to the Almighty. Within it lie the secrets and the prescription for Jewish continuity. If any group of people is to survive as an entity, it must have common values and goals – a direction and a meaning. By analyzing this portion we can learn much about our personal and national destiny.

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