Download Reward and, You Know, That Other Thing

The modern mystic, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner,
teaches through his poem On Angels and
Messengers:
“Each lifetime is the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle….
But know this. No one has within themselves
All the pieces to their puzzle…
Everyone carries with them at least
one and probably Many pieces to someone else's
puzzle…..”
Sometimes the truths found in the Torah seem as
if they don’t fit our section of the puzzle, as if they
belong to someone else’s sense of reality. In this
week’s Torah portion we are presented with one of
the most troubling concepts in Judaism: reward and
punishment.
The section of the text that I chose to read lists
the rewards for following the statutes and
commandments of God reported by Moses. What I
omitted was the long list of calamities that await
1
those who disobey. Although the concept of reward
and punishment has been a tenet of Judaism for a
very long time, it is one that has made the rabbis and
sages uncomfortable for almost the entire time. It
makes some of us uncomfortable, too.
The Book of Job is, of course, the most articulate
biblical refutation of the premise that the wicked
suffer and the good are blessed and of its chilling
corollary: that if one is suffering, one must deserve it.
The arguments set forth in Job make it crystal clear
that Job does NOT deserve to suffer. The only
reasonable conclusions to draw from this daring
treatment of the subjects of reward and punishment
and divine justice are a) in our world, sometimes
truly good or truly innocent people suffer and b) our
perspective is too limited to see the whole picture.
But in Job’s day, whenever that was, the first
conclusion—that the innocent suffer, too—was so
radical that it began to erode the underlying belief in
2
reward and punishment that was also clearly biblical
and, worse, it undermined people’s sense of justice
and fairness. Like Abraham, we began to raise the
question: should not the Judge of Righteousness deal
rightly?
Mishnaic and Talmudic sages tackled the
problem with their usual sensitivity and creativity.
Clearly, in this world, anyone could see that the
wicked didn’t always suffer and the good didn’t
always earn rewards as promised. Indeed, the
opposite was often observed to be true. Those of you
who have read As a Driven Leaf may recall the
experience of Elisha ben Abuya who was so
distraught at witnessing this terrible truth that he
became an apostate, leaving Judaism to immerse
himself in Greek culture and philosophy, about as far
as one could get from Judaism in his day.
Seeking to find justice in God’s world despite
evidence to the contrary, the Rabbis posited the
3
existence of the world to come, a non-biblical
concept that served to extend the statute of
limitations on recompense for human actions so that
the books would balance. Under the cruel oppression
of the Romans who resorted to torture of the most
brutal sort, there arose the notion that the good who
suffer in this world experience no punishment at all
in the world to come. Or, at least they build up a
credit and only suffer proportionately. The wicked
enjoy the fruits of this world but suffer dreadfully in
the world to come. Thus the rabbis salvaged God’s
justice and the concept of reward and punishment.
For some people, this notion is necessary. It
provides the motivation necessary to carry out the
chukim that have no rational explanation and the
mitzvot that might otherwise seem counter to their
own self interest. Fear of eternal unnamed
punishment frightens them where desire of reward
might fail to keep them on the right track.
4
But there have always been people who do not
respond to this method of procuring their loyalty.
This piece of Torah does not fit their picture, no
matter how comforting it is to someone else. Like the
ancient sage Antigonos of Sokho, they say "Be not
like servants who serve their master upon the
condition of receiving a reward, but be like servants
who serve their master without the condition of
receiving a reward" (Avot 1:3). Many modern
Reform Jews would tweak even this saying to read,
“Be not like partners who care only about their half
of the company; rather be like partners who look out
for the health of the whole company.
It doesn’t take an ancient sage or even a later
philosopher to inform us that mature people do the
right thing because their integrity urges them to do
so, not because they fear punishment or because they
desire reward. Knowing the parameters and
particulars of what the right thing is, is a source of
5
comfort and a basis of strength from which to begin
to act. Many truly religious people—and I include the
members of this congregation in this set—identify
that integrity with something Divine that works from
within us. When we are true to that inner voice, we
are at peace and bring peace to our world. When we
reject its urging, we are discontent or worse and
cause distress in our world.
Our Torah portion today describes the peace and
the distress that we bring upon ourselves and our
world when we follow or reject God’s instructions.
Whether we take the description literally and
subscribe to a world view in which God metes out
rewards and punishment, or whether we understand
the passage metaphorically and use it to bolster our
sense of spiritual or social or emotional health
doesn’t matter. When we align our deeds with our
sense of what is right, the result is strengthened
integrity. We improve our sense of what is right by
6
studying the principles laid out for us in the Torah
and learning to identify what is to be acted upon and
what is to be avoided; what is to be accepted and
what needs to be wrestled with:
This is what Beverly has done. As she
mentioned, the fact that the text excludes women
riled her. Rather than reject the whole Torah and kick
over her Judaism because of the surface level of the
ancient text, she dug and wrestled and found herself
on a deeper level of meaning. What floats right past
us at some points of our lives splashes cold water in
our faces at others. And what we embrace as life
affirming at some times strikes us as mean-spirited at
other times. Thus, we grow with the text and the text
grows with us. That’s the true reward of Torah
l’shma, Torah study for its own sake: growth. Growth
in sensitivity, growth in integrity, growth in holiness.
May we all earn the rewards of continued study and
struggle: may we grow in insight and understanding.
7
8