HOLY EMBARRASSMENT

​Wisdom Wherever You Find It

To many a modern Jew, the Tanakh is at once a holy book and an embarrassing one.    Benjamin Sommer

He’s talking about me.

Tanakh is an acronym for the Jewish Bible formed from the first letter of each of its three divisions – Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (the prophetic literature) and K(h)’tuvim (the various scrolls and historical writings).  Some folks call it the Old Testament, a name I used to take great offense at until I got old myself.  When I refer to it in English, I mostly just call it the Bible. People who want a more expansive definition of what constitutes that collection are welcome to raise the issue.

What I love about the Bible is how messy it is.  You can’t get past the second chapter of the first book (Genesis, for those of you uninitiated) without finding a contradiction.  The scientific illogic of the story of creation – in which plants spring up from the newly-formed world before the creation of the sun – is apparent to anyone who has put a healthy Ficus tree in a moving van for the half hour it takes to get to your new place.  And the unanswered questions about where Cain and Abel got their wives and who the giants were that coupled with human women are mind-bending.  And those are only a few of the narrative problems.  Wait until we get to Leviticus!

As the (purported) record of God’s interaction with human beings in general and Jews in particular, the Bible’s claim to authenticity is powerful for believers like me.  When I am asked by skeptics how I explain verses that are inconsistent with what I believe the divine will to be, my go-to answer is that the Bible is true, just not always accurate.  That generally gives me some time to escape while the listener is parsing my reply. 

But that answer does not work well when considering certain non-negotiable aspects of the eternal instructions for being a Jew in right relationship with God.  For example, if I accept the notion of sin (I do), then how do I return to right relationship?  The Torah prescribes animal sacrifice and does so in such specific terms that even my modern and squeamish sensibilities cannot substitute “something of material worth” for the unblemished goat, let alone contrition, prayer and a generous act without knowing it is a hack.

I find myself embarrassed by both belief and doubt, by both practice and neglect.  My consolation and comfort are that the Bible itself seems to be self-aware, metaphorically speaking, of the inconsistencies and challenges that emerge not just in the Torah, which covers a relatively contained period of history, but in the Nevi’im and K’tuvim, which cover a much broader span of history and geography.  Of course, we are thousands of years and billions of experiences beyond even that sweep of reportage.  If there is embarrassment about the contradictions, inconsistencies, anachronisms, and outrageous presumptions in this sacred collection, it is holy embarrassment.  It is a commitment to struggle with the Tanakh and with what is in it in the name of being in a living relationship.

It may be that there is no time that is more embarrassing than the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.  As remarkable a day as it is with its message of the power of atonement and forgiveness and its penetrating ritual and liturgy, there is only one small part of the day that resembles the Biblical origin of the ritual.  Buried in the doldrums of the afternoon, a long telling of the atonement sacrifices and ceremonies in the Temple – which has not stood for almost 2000 years – is often truncated or eliminated by us embarrassed contemporary Jews.

I have grappled with and groaned through it fifty or sixty times but finally arrived at a place that justified my holy embarrassment, thanks to the circumstances of this terrible pandemic that opened opportunities I might otherwise never have experienced.  Ishai Ribo, an orthodox Jewish Israeli folk-rock singer, delved into the service of the High Priest on Yom Kippur and created his own interpretation.  It became the basis of that liturgical dead spot at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in New York City in a way that moved me to deep (and penitential) tears in my Virginia home.

(It begins at the 5-hour, 42-minute mark here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7dBX00lR0.  Be patient with the introductory comments – you will not be sorry.)

The potential for such moments of explosive meaning keeps me returning to all the difficult parts of my Holy Scripture.  Not despite my embarrassment.  Rather, because of it.

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