Lessons of the Heart

Sermon Shabbat Ekev 5786, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona

Do you know this classic joke?  An Orthodox, a Conservative, and a Reform rabbi are each asked whether you are supposed to say a brochah over lobster.

The Orthodox rabbi asks, "What’s a...'lobster'?"

The Conservative rabbi says, “Some say yes, some say no.”

The Reform rabbi says, "What's a brochah?"

Or, what are the main differences between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism?

At an Orthodox wedding, the mother of the bride is pregnant.

At a Conservative wedding, the bride is pregnant.

At a Reform wedding, the rabbi is pregnant.  And so is her wife.

And so on.  Back in the olden days of the 20th Century, when I was growing up, we used to know that there were three kinds of Jews: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.  That was it.  Then I learned that there are other divisions among us: in addition to Ashkenazi Jews, there are Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean and Oriental, Mizrachi Jews from parts east and south; Israeli Jews, who are different from North American Jews; and English and Australian and South African Jews who speak English, well, funny.  As our horizons broadened, we learned that there are other types of Jews: Hasidic Jews, who are Orthodox but dressed like they are Amish; Reconstructionist Jews, who don’t believe we are the Chosen People; and Renewal Jews, who are very touchy-feely and wear Birkenstocks.  We even learned that there are something called Secular-Humanist Jews, who don’t believe in God and get together in minyans to not pray.

But in recent years there has been a development of new forms of Jewish identity, or semi-identity to complement the old stand-bys:  Gastronomic Jews: I am Jewish because I eat bagels and lox.  Checkbook Jews: I am Jewish because I give to Jewish causes.  Aerobic Jews: I am Jewish because I work out at the Jewish Community Center.  Sensory Jews: I am Jewish because I feel Jewish.  Committee Jews: I am Jewish because I am on the board of a Jewish organization, even though I am Catholic.  Cultural Jews: I am Jewish because I like Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Mrs. Maisel and New York City.  Political Jews: I am Jewish because I support AIPAC—or J Street, but definitely not both. Post-Facto Jews: I was very Jewish in Detroit or New Jersey or Chicago or Cleveland, but I already did that, so now, not so much...  And of course, minimalist Jews: I am Just Jewish.  But of all the contemporary formulations of Jewish identity, my favorite is one that puts this tendency into sharpest focus:  Cardiac Jews: I am Jewish in my heart. 

Now typically we members of the organized Jewish community are not too favorably disposed to Cardiac Jews.  After all, if the only place you keep Shabbat or the holidays or your connection to Israel or other Jews is in your heart, you are not exactly actualizing your experience of our amazing tradition.  So much for the goodness of cardiac Judaism, I tended to think—at least until I read this week’s Torah portion of Ekev. 

You see, there is a puzzling passage in Ekev.  It tells us to do something physically impossible—in Ekev we are instructed to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts…  This is a new kind of berit milah, and one that smacks of flat-out self-murder.  Circumcise our hearts?  How are we to do that, with a flint knife on top of an Aztec Temple?  And how could that possibly relate to the moral commandments we have been given in this portion, which form the core of our Deuteronomic covenantal connection to the Ethical God?

First, if we were to do that actual act, circumcising the heart, cut off a flap of the essential human organ, we would die, no matter how skilled the mohel.  So, it must be a metaphor.  In fact, this passage defines the fact that the Torah was never meant to be read purely literally and makes it very clear that Torah is and always was a teaching device to create and focus moral direction, not a simplistic piece of ancient lore to be taken literally.  No Jews really read the Torah purely literally.  Not even Chabadniks…  So just what can this odd locution mean? 

A word about the heart.  To our Israelite ancestors and to many authors, poets, songwriters, and greeting card companies, the heart has always been considered the seat of human emotions.  “I give you my heart,” we say, or “I love you with all my heart.”  In the Shema, in last week’s Torah portion, we were commanded to “love God with all your heart, b’chol l’vavcha.”  Sometimes, we give the heart credit for more than just love; hatred too, can be located there.  We are taught, in the Torah, “Do not hate another in your heart” and “he hardened his heart”; and we say things like, “She has a cold heart.” 

The heart is also seen as the locus of knowledge, the place where our essential understanding is kept.  Long ago Arizona’s own Barry Goldwater ran for president with the slogan, “In your heart, you know he’s right.”  He wasn’t, but the appeal to the heart was central.

But of course, this heart stuff is all a metaphor.  Modern science has taught us for generations now that the heart is just a very fancy, very efficient pumping machine, merely an important part of our own indoor plumbing.  Our emotions, our higher cognitive functions, and our memory are all located higher up in our anatomy, within our brains.  Cogito ergo sum, Descartes told us long ago: I think therefore I am.  Generally speaking, scientific research has confirmed this.  The heart is the engine that drives the car but not the operator, a strong, stupid, muscle-and-valve contraption that can be replaced by an artificially built machine.  In fact, you can take a heart out of one body and put it in another successfully, and they used to do this here in Tucson at the U of A’s Sarver Heart Center.

So, the heart isn’t the center of emotion or memory at all.  All those old songs, poems and stories, and our Torah portion of Ekev, they are all wrong about that.  Or are they?

There is some interesting research that has been done on patients who have successfully had heart transplant surgery.  A man named Dr. Paul Pearsall, a neuropsychiatrist on the faculty of several major universities, including doing work at the U of A heart transplant center, wrote 18 best-selling books among many other accomplishments.  He studied transplant patients and found some unexpected results: the background of a new heart affects its recipient directly.  That is, the feelings and preferences, and even the knowledge and personality of the original heart’s owner begin to change the recipient after the transplant.

The changes documented in heart recipients are startling.  One man began to yearn for spicy foods and to study Spanish—and learned that his donor had been Hispanic.  Another found herself going repeatedly to walk along the banks of a local stream for comfort—and learned later that this had been the donor’s favorite place to sit, think, and write.  A quiet, reserved, painfully shy man suddenly discovered new confidence and entered a career in public speaking—only to find out that the donor of his heart had been a TV newscaster.  There are many stories like this in the book called The Heart’s Code.  Pearsall goes on to explain the theory and science behind energy cardiology, an emerging field that is uncovering one of the significant medical, social, and spiritual discoveries of our time.  It turns out that the heart is not just a pump; as the book puts it, “the heart conducts the cellular symphony that is the very essence of our being.”   The heart not only feels, as our ancestors believed, but also thinks and knows and cares.

Pearsall theorized that what is wrong with our own society is that it is run by our brains, not our hearts, and that this damages us on a personal and sociological level.  If we learn to listen to the subtle energy and wisdom contained within our own hearts we can learn valuable lessons about love, work, prayer, healing, and even playing.

I believe the Torah was on to this concept long ago, right here in Parshat Ekev.  Circumcising the foreskin of our hearts means that in order to open our hearts to God, to holiness, and to goodness so that we might learn how to do what God asks, we must cut away a certain layer, klipah, that exists there.   We must remove the hard casing we construct over our innate humanity, the armor of ego, self-interest and self-importance that builds up out of our insecurity, or out of overconfidence—the arrogance of the eternal critic, the cool hostility of the perpetual cynic, the self-righteous anger of the eternally injured.  We must take our heads out of the equation for a bit, shut off the controlling, judging negativity of the brain and let our hearts express the depth of feeling and empathy within them.

It is reflecting the compassion of the heart, rather than the criticism of the mind.  It is emphasizing our shared humanity, not our superficial differences.  It is a kind of spiritual brit milah that Ekev teaches.

When we remove the hard casing around our hearts, when we perform this spiritual milah, we change ourselves for the better.  We can then open our hearts and feel, and know, that God is good, and desires good—that what God wants is something we can offer.  The various ways Ekev advocates exploring how to fulfill God’s desires are really no more than a means to creating good in the world: one path of kindness, ethics, and personal respect. This is the heart of the matter.  This is the lesson of the heart.

On this Shabbat, and over the coming week, may we each learn to listen to our own hearts, to get our heads out of the way long enough to touch that holiness within us.  And then we may become truly cardiac Jews—Jews in our heart, and in all other aspects of our lives.