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Covenantal Living, Sean Dreifuss
Covenantal LIVING
SEAN DREIFUSS
decided to deliver this speech to you in letter form so that I could convey the significance of your wedding and its overall relation to your Jewish life at large. Marriage is a covenant. This message not only applies to you, but it comes from my own experience and is felt strongly among those in the Jewish community. I hope you will take these messages to heart and realize the importance and duty you possess as an individual Jew living covenantally. I
ear Jonah, Today, you legally enter a covenant. While this is a new covenant for you, it surely is not the first covenant in your life. You may be asking yourself, “What even is a covenant?”. The answer to that question is multifaceted. In its most simple form, a covenant is an agreement similar to that of a contract or a pact. The covenant that you live by is that which defines you as a Jew and as a human being in all your relationships. While you may D
not have signed the covenant you have in your life knowingly, you are bound in many covenants. As a Jew, your covenant has three primary facets: one with God, one with the community, and one with the self. Although each of these covenants is predicated on distinct values and responsibilities, they all culminate to form your Jewish identity.
From the dawn of time, all humans, not just Jews, were brought into this world with an inherent covenant with God. In Bereishit, God creates humans in God’s image, imbuing humans with intrinsic worth, as the Torah states, “Vayivra elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo, b’tzelem elohim bara oto, zachar v’nekevah bara otam. God created humanity in God’s image. In the image of God, God created him. Male and female, God created them” (Bereishit 1:27). In creating the world, God creates male and female as equals, and the first human is often regarded as an androgynous being. As Dr. Judith Klitsner explains, the way in which the Torah describes God relating to humans is the ideal, prescribed vision for humanity (Subversive Sequels in the Bible). See Dreifuss, next page
Dreifuss, from page 3 Because humans are made in the image of God, God then commands humans differently than all other creations. Humans must fill and master the world as God instructs in order to follow the covenant made by God’s creating man in God’s image. At the end of Bereishit 1, the covenant between humans and God seems simple: if humans fill the earth and follow God’s word, then God they will be living out what it means to be made in the image of God and, hence, God will provide from them. While in Bereishit 1, the Torah lays out the ideal presciption of how the world should look, Bereishit 2 and 3 illustrate the description of how real life actually plays out (Klitsner, 106). How can the androgynous follow God by filling the earth? This question leads to Beresihit 2, which introduces a new integral element to humanity: relationships. From here, the need for a new covenant arises. Here, God puts man into the Garden of Eden, as the Torah describes, “Vayikach Hashem Elohim et ha’adam vayinachehu b’gan Eden. The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it.” (Bereishit 2:15). Then, God commands man not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Finally, God asserts, “Lo tov heyot ha’adam levado, e’eseh lo ezer k’negdo.It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.” (Bereishit 2:18), which sets up the need for woman. However, at first glance, it seems that this relationship undermines the ideal created in Genesis 1. Woman is regarded as a helper to Adam, filling his loneliness. This role subordinates woman and creates a gender hierarchy. The way in which the founding covenant with God plays out is puzzling. Does having a covenant with God possess a different meaning for different people? Did God want hierarchy? Is the covenant between humans fair? What even is the covenant between humans? These questions are essential to understanding both the human-to-human covenant and the human-to-God covenant. From this defining difference among the first three chapters of Bereishit, I believe that being made in the image of God does not merely mean following the command of Bereishit 1:28 to fill and dominate the earth. To further understand what this Divine image and covenant with God mean, I turn to the Talmud. Massechet Sanhedrin 37a teaches that “Lefichach nivra ha’adam yechidi l’lamdach shekol hameabed nefesh ahat ma’ale alav hakatuv keilu ibed olam maleh. Therefore humanity was created singly to teach that anyone who kills a person, Scripture speaks of them as if they destroyed and entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). God created humans in the image of God so that each human would regard their fellow human with immense dignity and equality. Each person has the worth of an entire world. This mishnah teaches that our covenant with God and our covenant with the community of all humans goes hand in hand. By understanding one’s fellow as if they are a world, humans have a mandate to live out the covenant with humanity with the same respect and honor that one lives out the covenant with God. The image of God is one that is multifaceted and hard to understand. From my understanding, God is the embodiment of ideal justice and love. Thus, taking this view of God into account, to live out the covenant with God means to walk in the ways of God and manifest God’s attribute on earth through our covenants with other humans.
rom the understanding of covenant that I have put forth so far, it seems as if the Rabbis have worked to harmonize both the covenant between humans and God and the covenant between humans and humans. See Dreifuss, next page To live out the covenant with God means to walk in the ways of God and manifest God’s attributes on earth through our covenants with other humans.
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Dreifuss, from previous page However, this harmony is manifestly disturbed throughout the Torah. For example, in the Akeidah narrative, the binding of Isaac, to the contemporary eye, God’s commanding Avraham to sacrifice his son is a sacrifice of the ethical. Relating the narrative to my life today, how can I sacrifice my ethics for God? In this quandary, I turn to Rabbi Ethan Tucker. Responding to the dilemma of the ethicality of the sacrifice of Isaac, Tucker affirms, “God would not command Avraham — and does not command us — to do things that we understand to be immoral. When we experience a gap between our understanding of divine will and the ethical imperative, something is in need of fixing” (Tucker). Tucker speaks to the difference between the Sinai covenant and creation covenant, the covenant of the Jewish people and the covenant for all humans, suggesting that these two forces should never be in conflict. In the times of Avraham, child sacrifice was not necessarily considered immoral, which means that the Akeidah, though morally repugnant contemporarily, would not conflict with Avraham’s ethics. Nonetheless, the act of giving up one’s child is a painful sacrifice. Therefore, I learned that I do not necessarily need to surrender my morals for God, but, also, giving up something essential in my life may lead me closer to the Divine. While I have not made any large sacrifices in my life yet in relations to God, I do see how smaller, more trivial appearing sacrifices that I often make bring me closer to God. The Akeidah teaches, as illustrated above, that the covenant with God is not always simple. According to Tucker and many other readings, God did not necessarily want Avraham actually to sacrifice his son (or any human beings, for that matter). Rather, God wanted to display to Avraham and all mankind that covenants are not agreements that can be easily abided by. Covenant requires sacrifice to some degree; it requires commitment. Of course, in an ideal world, our covenant with God and our covenant with our fellow would always be in harmony.
See Dreifuss, page 21
