Hunger and Desire the Jewish Way

I remember the years when our children were invited to their friends’ b’nei mitzvah.  We did a lot of carpooling in those years to get them to and from various receptions.  Every parent knows that if you just drive quietly, your children and their friends will sort of forget you’re there and they’ll talk pretty openly.

As the occasional chauffer I heard all sorts of things about friendships and crushes.  But the most entertaining part, I think, was when I’d drive them home from a celebration and hear a critique of the food at the party. 

I’m talking an all-out analysis of the cocktail hour that would make Ruth Reichl proud.

The sushi was better last week.

The franks in a blanket were room temperature – can you believe it?

Etc.

These conversations got me thinking about how, from an early age, we need to deal with desire and self-control.  Beyond that, they can raise questions about the way we think about abundance and scarcity.  A tiny percentage of the world’s population experiences cocktail hours.

This morning, I want to explore the overarching issue, not just as it pertains to food, and that is – what does Judaism teach us about how we relate to the physical world which includes how we eat and how we handle sexuality.

We are not disembodied souls hovering around, and on the high holidays we say, explicitly, הנשמה לך והגוף פעלך haneshama lach ve haguf po’olach – the soul and the body are God’s handiwork. 

In one ancient rabbinic text, the angels criticize human beings for not being able to control themselves, and the human beings say in their defense to the angels – you try to exist for one day in the world with hunger and lust and the reality of being mortal and see how well you do.

I’m going to take us on a little journey to explore the parameters of the Jewish view of how we relate to the real world with all its beauty and terror, its enticements and its frustrations. 

Some religious traditions emphasize asceticism as an ideal – their leaders model avoiding that which gives pleasure to the body as way of enhancing the spirit.  We have seen that, for example, with certain Christian monastic groups over the centuries. 

Jewish tradition, going back to its Biblical origins, has had notions of asceticism, but in a limited way.  It would be hard to claim that it was the ideal.

The Nazir, described in this morning’s Torah reading, voluntarily took an oath not to drink wine or liquor.  The Nazir also vowed not to cut his or her hair. The torah is explicit, by the way, that men AND women could become a Nazir.

What was the attitude toward the Nazir?  Was the person commended for the self-restrictive behavior or criticized?

Since the Torah doesn’t give an explicit analysis, we don’t know for sure.  But it is curious that when the Nazir was finished with the temporary period of abstinence, he or she needed to bring a chata’at, a sacrificial offering designated to atone for someone who committed a sin.

Why a sin-offering?  What was the sin?

According to well-known medieval scholar Nachmanides, the sin was that the person was ending the period of self-sacrifice.  While the person was a Nazir, he or she was, as the Torah put it, Kodesh ladonai, set apart as sacred to God; and now the person was going to become impure once again by engaging in ta’avot ha’olam, life’s pleasures.

Maimonides, more or less a contemporary, had a very different opinion.  He argued that the sin of the Nazir was to deny him or herself legitimate pleasures in the first place. 

Indeed, in his extensive chapters on personal conduct called Hilchot Deot, laws pertaining to personal qualities and behavior, Maimonides advocated again and again for the golden mean, embracing the pleasures of food, drink and sexuality in a balanced way, not denying them, but not becoming obsessed with them either.

Maimonides absorbed a fair amount of Greek philosophical perspective, living among Neo-Aristotelians, but his approach, I believe, has deep roots in Jewish tradition going back to the Bible.

The world that God created is described as טוב מאד tov me’od, very good, in the beginning of Genesis.

Psalm 104, which begins barkhi nafshi et adonai, my soul praises God, describes the world as a place that is intentional and bountiful.

You cause grass to grow for cattle, and plants for people to cultivate, bringing forth bread from the earth, ויין ישמח לבב אנוש v’yayin y’samach l’vav enosh, wine to gladden the human heart and bread to sustain human life.

The Torah describes deveikut, a deep connection, that occurs between a man and woman.  In our own day, we are increasingly expanding the definition of profound emotional and erotic partnership to include same-sex couples as well.

Of course the Torah also describes violence and famine, wrestles with the source of evil, and explores problems that emerge with excessive behavior in the realm of food, drink or sexuality.

But the world is presented by and large as a good place, and later traditions emerged that encourage us to enjoy ta’avot ha’olam, life’s pleasures, appropriately and responsibly.

Judaism’s teachings in this regard are as important today as ever because I see increasingly a split between denial on the one side and excess on the other. 

When you check out what’s going on at college campuses on a Thursday night, you frequently, not always, see behavior that’s excessive.  People getting sick from drinking too much, sexual boundaries that are crossed without appropriate consent.

The intimacy and pleasure that the Torah reflects, and which later rabbinic tradition affirms, is sometimes sadly missing when young people are together.  Part of that is the intensity of being young, but you see it with more mature adults as well, a kind of intense acquisition in multiple realms that is not about life’s beauty, but something else.

I want to leave us with some tachlis, some concrete aspects of our tradition that help us find the middle ground.

First, Jews say a blessing before we eat and drink.  The blessing reminds us that we are not the source of our nourishment – even if we’re farmers, the bounty comes from a source beyond ourselves.  The blessing, the bracha, encourages us to slow down, possibly even to look at the piece of fruit or the glass of wine, to feel the synergy between us and a piece of the world.

Second, we say a blessing after we eat and drink.  It gives us time to digest, it brings the meal to an end, and, in the case of birkat hamazon, it encourages us think about our obligations to those who are hungry.

Which leads me to the third thing, that we are required to give tzedakah.  That goes way back, to the time our ancestors were required to leave the corners of their fields un-harvested so that the poor could come and glean.

Today, I strongly encourage people to support Mazon, a Jewish response to hunger.  An ideal time to support Mazon is when you’re planning a simcha.  Mazon will give you place cards to put out at a bar mitzvah or wedding reception that indicate that a certain donation was made on behalf of each guest.

Sexuality is understood as a very powerful force that can be used to foster emotional connection and mutuality, but can also be used to demean and suppress.

Our tradition therefore places sexuality in the context of committed sacred relationship, encourages sexuality to be expressed on Shabbat, when there is the time and context for intimacy. 

The Biblical verb for sexual relations is the word “to know,” suggesting that physical connection between people ideally ought to involve deepening their emotional connection.

The young teens who are being driven to and from bar and bat mitzvah celebrations are in the throes of trying to understand the relationship between their desires and the world around them.

They may be very sophisticated at analyzing the content of a cocktail hour, but they are only just beginning to fathom how they are to relate to the world, with its temptations, its dangers, its inconsistencies.

How important, then, for the adults in their lives to model all of this responsibly.

Each religious tradition has ways of encouraging this.

Those of the Jewish faith, I encourage to demonstrate, through actions and words, that food is made to be enjoyed and appreciated, but not just by us.  The Shabbat dinner or Sunday snack or full-blown cocktail hour that we enjoy requires us to give thanks before and after, and also to consider our obligations to those who don’t eat so well.

The glass of wine on Shabbat or at a simcha is ours to enjoy, provided there is no medical or emotional reason for us to abstain completely, provided we are mature enough to handle it, provided we understand the difference between pleasure and loss of control.

Sexuality is a sublime gift and we should be talking to our children about the relationship between lust and love, about appropriate contexts for intimacy.

I come down on the side of Maimonides.  The Nazirite is not our hero.  We don’t sanctify our lives apart from the world, we sanctify our lives in it, through it.

Whether we are 13 or 83, we should each be able to say, and feel, the concluding portion of Psalm 104.  אשירה לה׳ בחיי Ashira ladonai b’chayai.

With my life, lived fully and responsibly, I sing out to God.  Let all of our lives, so lived, be an extended song of praise to our Creator.

Originally presented at Temple Israel of Great Neck on May 30, 2015