Bechuqotai

VaYiqra 26:3-27:34)

The Curse of Paranoia

Aryeh Bernstein, 5763

Parashat Behuqotai concludes the book of VaYiqra with a glimpse into the different worlds we can expect to inhabit if we fulfill the mitzvot or if we abandon them. The rewards promised for a life of mitzvot are fairly standard fare and what most of us would hope and expect for "the good life": our crops will be rich and plentiful, so we will not know hunger or privation; we will have peace in the land, without attacks from vicious beasts or hostile armies, and even if enemies do arise against us, we will prevail mightily against them. We ourselves will be fertile, surrounding ourselves with healthy, hopeful children, and God will dwell in our midst.

On the other hand, "if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, if you reject My laws and spurn My rules, so that you do not observe all My mitzvot and you break My covenant" (26:14-16), we can expect a disastrous future for ourselves. Again, most of the elaboration of details fits into a standard, horrific, frightening wrathful-God-lashes-out-at-unfaithful-servants script: epidemics of fatal and very painful diseases; famine, rendering all of our backbreaking labor useless; our enemies rout us; wild beasts devour our cattle and children. Horrors like these are threatened in increasing cycles of severity the longer we abandon the mitzvot.

While all the curses terrify me, one in particular intrigues me and gives me chills more than all the others. In 26:17, after warning us that our foes will attack us, the Torah warns that "וְנַסְתֶּם וְאֵין רֹדֵף אֶתְכֶם"-"you shall flee, though none pursues you". Similarly, in one of the later, more severe cycles of curses, the Torah threatens as follows (26:36):

It is one thing for God to strike fear in the hearts of the people by warning of future punishment; it is quite another-an astonishing other-for the punishment itself to be fear. What does it mean to threaten paranoia and what might that indicate to us about what mitzvot are and how we relate to them?

Before considering these difficult questions, I will pause and note my additional measure of surprise and intrigue that these haunting verses have received virtually no attention in the familiar locales of Jewish interpretation. I found virtually nothing in the Talmud and Midrashim, no special attention from classical, medieval commentators, such as Rashi and Ramban. Even in more modern voices, such as the Netziv, and even in post-Freud thinkers, such as Rav Hutner and Heschel, I came up empty, although my search was not exhaustive. Numerous teachers whom I consulted said that they, too, found these verses especially provocative, but knew of no commentaries on them. I do think, however, that we may find help in the thought of Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Zvi Kolitz (in Confrontation, a book on Rav Soloveitchik's thought) quotes Freud's student and colleague, Otto Rank, as saying that "The neurotic type suffers from a consciousness of sin as much as did his religious ancestors, without, however, believing in the conception of sin. This is precisely what makes him neurotic: he feels a sinner without the religious belief in sin, for which he therefore needs a new, rational explanation."

In a world with as much choice as our world affords us, it can be quite difficult to maintain a classical approach to commandedness-an approach that identifies the right way and the wrong way in clear terms, with clear expectations for good or bad consequences. With a dizzying array of possibilities of how to act, there cannot simply be THE right way. This pluralistic orientation leaves us without guideposts for maneuvering the confusing labyrinth of life. Since we feel commanded in nothing, everything becomes an option, equally valid in the realm of the potential. What Rank is saying is that even though the terms "right" and "wrong" don't make much sense to the modern rationalist, nevertheless, we feel there to be meaning to them: we feel things to be right or wrong, but we are unable to name them as such. Therefore, we can become gripped in the claws of guilt or neurosis when we feel wrong about our actions. Lacking the means to express this, we can become paranoid, feeling under attack by something indescribable and unknown. This is the most devastating sort of fear, because it presents no available road to recovery. (While other, more conventional, fears present roads that may seem too steep to traverse, such as apology, reconciliation, or physical self-defense, nevertheless the very presence of those options can be psychologically reassuring.)

Perhaps this is what Kierkegaard means when he describes anxiety as "the dizziness of freedom" (in The Concept of Anxiety).

Rav Soloveitchik writes that "When man sins, he creates a distance between himself and God. To sin means to remove oneself from the presence of the Master of the universe: I was standing before You, and sin came and estranged me from You, and I no longer feel that I am ‘before You'. The whole essence of the concept of repentance is longing, yearning, pining to return again to be ‘before You.' Longing develops only when one has lost something precious. ‘From afar the Lord appeared to me' ["מֵרָחוֹק יְהֹוָה נִרְאָה לִי", Jer. 31:2]. Sin pushes man far away and stimulates his longing to return" (On Repentance, p. 92).

Paranoia is the loss of proportions, a loss of one's sense of placement. It is the most grotesque, dark side of rootlessness, a feeling of disconnect from who one is and who one can be. I think we can fairly say that we can't responsibly portray a life of mitzvot either as a guarantee for goodness and peace or as the only or objectively best way to achieve goodness in the world. However, each person and each community, in order to reach her potential, must speak her own language to bring out her best. Mitzvot are the Jewish people's language of expression. Mitzvot in this light are an opportunity to locate oneself, to stand in encounter with God's face, as it were. Even when one protests against an aspect of one's language, this is a far cry from the abandonment that our parashah describes. Such a person is still engaged in knowing herself and striving for goodness as she, and only she, can be, and as the world needs her to be. What the Torah is describing in the threat of paranoia is that a person who terribly estranges herself from mitzvot lives in a world without roads-not without any roads at all, but without roads that can be useful for her. The farther she goes in her estrangement, the deeper she feels to be embedded in a dark forest with hostile noises and footsteps on her heels-in other words, she feels as if she is on the run, though no one pursues her.

The parashah implores us, warns us, to know ourselves and seek to navigate the minefield of life through the language that is ours, the language of mitzvot.

Hazaq, Hazaq, VeNithazeq.