4 Banim, and Why I am Not Choosing to Become a Rabbi

My truth tends to emerge from my experience.

The traditional assumed evolution of the Arba banim in the Haggadah is from last to first: from the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask, to the Simple, to the Wicked, to the Clever. But my lived experience suggests the reverse direction: according to the order in which they are actually written.

For years I struggled with typecasting as the clever child. I was the intellectual, and to the extent that I could do that successfully, I was given a place in the world. Had I been a man, I would have become a rabbi. Being a woman freed me to take my journey with fewer prying eyes, fewer consequences.

In my late twenties, I carefully began to discover the wicked child in me, questioning the existing order, make changes in my dress and my thinking. Thus I evolved and still do. The wicked child continues to live in me, occasionally racing around and roaring inside; but she has become part of the whole. As I hit middle age, I aim to run with the wolves. That’s still a work in progress.

In my late thirties I discovered meditation. I was taught to approach the world with beginners’ mind, “What’s this?” My journey of rejecting the intellect and embracing my experience and the body became more full and rich. I evolved again. learned to know life biblically rather than in a western mode. I’m still learning how to ask “What’s this?” or “Tell me about you,” and practice listening to the other’s perspective cleanly, without bringing all the baggage and assumptions the wicked and the clever child bring.

Now I am wondering if perhaps the end point is to get to a place where you don’t even ask. You sit in silence, and let the other person tell you what they choose to. At the end of the book of Job, after all of his fierce questions, G-d appears in a whirlwind and gives him no answers, just a full-on experience, opening his eyes to creation. Job stops asking his questions. Something changes; he repents and is silent. He even "forgets" how to ask; he has become an experiencer, who learns simply by taking in the Being of all things.

In one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha transitions from being a young man, religiously talented, arrogant, (“I can think, I can wait, I can fast”), to a man of the world, rich, a gambler, with a lover, and finally to an old man sitting by the river, ever listening for its message. I believe Herman Hesse would concur that the evolution of the Arba Banim is actually in the reverse direction as I argue, as exemplified in the life of Siddhartha.

Perhaps the above answers why I haven’t chosen to become a rabbi now that the doors have opened to Orthodox women, despite my obviously leanings in that direction. Orthodox ordination would take me in the opposite direction to my life journey. When being a rabbi comes to mean asking “What’s this” – or not asking at all, just listening, just being – then I may consider it. Till then, I am content with my journey.

And Lilith fled

The mythology of the demon queen Lilith appears in a number of Jewish sources. Lilith represents an evil force who, among other things, kills babies. One of the sources where Lilith appears is the Zohar. However the Zohar tells us the story differently from other sources. Rather than being created demonic, she started off as a non-evil spirit:

There is a female, a spirit of all spirits, and her name is Lilith, and she was at first with Adam (Zohar 3:19)

She had union with Adam who was at that time a spirit, in primal undifferentiated form (i.e. encapsulating both male and female, as in the verse in Genesis 1:27). However, once Adam began differentiating into male and female, Lilith fled and became evil.

Thereafter the Holy One, blessed be He, sawed Adam into two, and made the female. And He brought her to Adam in her perfection like a bride to the canopy. When Lilith saw this, she fled. And she is in the cities of the sea, and she is still trying to harm the sons of the world. (Zohar 3:19)

What precisely made Lilith flee? The Zohar does not tell us, though this is an intriguing question in and of itself. It might be because she was jealous of Eve, or upset that Adam now had a body while she did not. But I want to suggest something more. We see that she saw Adam becoming whole – developing male and female aspects, while she remained only female. It seems to me that once Adam had evolved, but she had not, the union became imbalanced and that was why she fled. This is a lesson for male-female relationships. In some relationships, each partner is playing up only half of the aspects of the self - the gendered half. The woman plays up only her feminine aspects to the very masculine man. However, where one partner has developed to be more whole and integrate his/her own male and female aspects, the other partner will have to develop similarly for the relationship to endure and thrive.

A second important point here is that the Zohar’s Lilith was originally not evil. What made her evil was her feelings of offense, or upset, or rejection. The Zohar is making a profound statement about the roots of evil, that lie in our actions and reactions. How much damage rejection can do! I mentioned this already in this post, about Timna.

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I originally ended this post here, with the words:

"Two wounded beings unleash so much bad into the world. How can we help people move beyond their negative emotions? What can we do to add to the world’s healing? Here's one route. "

However, today my teacher Avraham mentioned something that puts a much deeper spin on it, that repesents a spiritual development. He taught that Leah is kabbalistically seen as a reincarnation of Lilith, no less (and Rachel is Eve, with Jacob equivalent to Adam).

Like Lilith, Leah too suffers from tremendous rejection and pain. For her entire life, her husband Jacob has given his love to her sister Rachel. Leah's challenges in her lifetime represent the opportunity for growth and tikkun for the Lilith soul inside her. True repentance, says the Rambam, is only when you are back in the same situation and you act differently. Thus, in her lifetime Leah had a similar experience to Lilith, of rejection - but her response is different. Instead of acting in a childish, unevolved manner and storming off to do angry damage in the world, Leah lives within the situation, tries to resolve it, and even strives to feel gratitude for what she actually has, as we see when she names Judah and says "This time I shall thank G-d."

We all get to face our unique personal challenges again and again, in different forms, so that we can refine our responses and react from a more evolved place each time. This is how we heal the world (and meditation [see the link above] is indeed a very valuable tool, as it teaches us to hold our emotions in a different way).

[Thanks to my teacher Avraham Leader for introducing me to this passage. Translation of Zohar is from this site]

Think before rejecting

One of the most incredible paragraphs in the Talmud explains that Amalek came into being due to Jewish rejection of a prospective convert:

And Lotan's sister was Timna... Timna was a royal princess... Desiring to become a proselyte, she went to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they did not accept her. So she went and became a concubine to Eliphaz the son of Esau, saying, 'I had rather be a servant to this people than a mistress of another nation.' From her Amalek was descended who afflicted Israel. Why so? — Because they should not have repulsed her. (Sanhedrin 99b)

We are not told why she was rejected. Since the mission of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was to spread monotheism, why did they not want to accept her? Was there something about her that made them feel uncomfortable? Whether that was true or not, this courageous section of Talmud makes no bones about its message. It was our own fault that we ended up plagued by Amalek, our arch-nemesis. Evil begets evil.

So next parshat Zachor, let's wipe out not only Amalek but also, in general, acts of rejection we commit due to insularity, snobbery, fear or hatred. Let's try harder to embrace and welcome people with open arms, even those who make us feel uncomfortable, and remember the words of Bob Marley in his song "Corner Stone":

Cause the things people refuse

Are the things they should choose