Responsibly Iconoclastic

This homily on Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19 (Parashat Ki Tetze) encourages artists to boldly challenge conventions while staying grounded in compassion and responsibility. Torah's myriad of mitzvot, especially those about ethical treatment of others and safeguarding the vulnerable, offer a powerful framework for artists. Just as the Torah commands us to care for the marginalized and protect what’s sacred, artists are reminded that creativity isn't about tearing down for its own sake but about transforming the world with purpose. This teaching urges artists to embrace their iconoclastic spirit, pushing boundaries in their work while ensuring their impact uplifts and serves the greater good, blending disruption with empathy and social responsibility.

Transcript

This week opens with the stories of a wayward and defiant son whom you must execute,

Something our sages in later centuries,

Rabbinic sages,

Were extremely discomforted by,

Such that they legislated it out of possibility and out of existence.

Also in this week's Torah reading we're described the mamzer,

Which is often translated as bastard.

Not the true translation.

It is not bastard as we understand it,

But a child born of illicit relationship,

Not one with no known father,

But more particularly one whose mother is married,

Whose parents might have been of too close consanguinity,

That is,

Biologic relationship to have children,

And a few other cases.

But these are,

Maybe I'm being a little humorous,

A little tongue-in-cheek about this,

These are examples of rebels,

Of people living on the outskirts,

On the margins of society,

Just as artists tend to,

People who speak in a different language,

People who have a very distinct experience to that of a socially integrated other.

So I want to just draw our attention to the fact that there have always been prophets and heretics,

Social outcasts,

Pariahs,

Those who had a difficult time fitting in,

Those like you perhaps,

Whose creativity gives you a different sense and perspective of the world around you.

They were even aware of those who were transsexual or transvestite,

Not with much generous awareness till many centuries later,

But there is a line in Deuteronomy 22 verse 5 that forbids cross-dressing.

They were aware of these phenomena,

And in the medieval period and certainly in the early modern period,

They were much more comfortable with transgender experiences.

The only question became whether if someone transitioned during your marriage,

You had to get remarried because you had not married the person you had believed yourself to marry.

But even in the era of the Talmud,

We knew of people who did not subscribe to traditional gender roles.

There was a woman named Michal,

The daughter of a Cushite who wore religious garments,

And the rabbinic sages of the era did not attempt to prevent her.

There was the wife of Jonah who took religious pilgrimage,

Typically attended by males,

And the sages did not prevent her.

Rare counter-examples of people defying social norms,

Defying gender roles,

Defying family relationships as expected with the mamzer or the wayward and defiant son.

Our tradition understood.

It wasn't always comfortable with society that existed in a bell curve and that there was a variety of experience and that there were eccentric and eclectic experiences,

But it knew of them.

And if it didn't make its peace with them,

It at least understood not everyone had the same experience,

And some experiences were in some ways more difficult or also important as contrast and counterpoint.

So knowing that,

How do we become artists of the world?

For me,

I know as a socially very awkward child,

How does one learn to be both integrated and apart from?

How does one learn passion and compassion if one,

And not just artists feel this way,

Feels so different,

Feels so distinct from the norm,

The majority of society,

The average,

The vanilla,

The basic?

I don't want to be crass.

So there's this beautiful,

Strange commandment in this week's Torah portion called shiluach haken,

Which is that were you to collect a bird or its eggs,

You have to separate them.

You can't collect the eggs from under the bird,

Wave off the bird before you collect its eggs.

Bizarre,

Mysterious commandment that seems to have no social import,

No clear moral reasoning.

The only thing it makes me think of is the Muddy Waters song,

Bird's Nest on the Ground,

Which was a song I was listening to when I met my wife.

It's a song about getting lucky.

I guess at some point in Southern black culture,

I believe it was,

Little research I knew,

Finding a bird's nest on the ground was a lucky thing.

I still believe that.

And I experienced meeting my wife as a bird's nest on the ground,

Like this lucky thing that only I caught.

So that being said,

This mitzvah,

This commandment,

This understanding that we ought not take egg and mother bird at the same time,

What is it for?

Why?

Why in a Torah that is not distinctly lengthy,

As the Mabatra,

The Vedas,

I think are quite significantly longer,

As far as sacred text goes,

That is parsimonious and a little bit frugal with its words.

Why this command?

Why does this reach to the level of being told to us?

So the Kitab Sofer,

Who was Abraham Shmuel Binyamin,

He wrote in the 19th century in what is now Slovakia,

He,

Among others,

Points out that this mitzvah,

This commandment,

This ordinance implants in our hearts the virtue of mercy.

And when you do it,

You become merciful.

It's one of the few places in the Torah where it explains that doing this thing will grant you long life.

And this goes to a little my anxiety when people say they are spiritual but not religious,

Because I think for some of them it means,

I want to feel good,

But I don't want rigor or discipline,

Which is not a lesson of Judaism and not one I believe in either.

I think to feel good,

To be spiritual requires continual discipline,

Whether it's a meditation practice.

For me,

Currently,

Long walks in the woods,

A journaling practice,

A prayer practice,

Attending church,

Synagogue,

Mosque,

Temple,

Whatever it is,

You have to go deeper.

The inner journey can't be an easy one and can't be always pleasant,

And we shouldn't avoid it when it is unpleasant.

It says our sages,

The mitzvot,

The ordinances of Torah,

Were only given to refine creation,

Like molten gold to refine a metal.

I think that's the nature of spiritual and artistic practice.

It refines us uniquely as individuals,

But has the possibility of refining community and world.

Doing the right thing matters.

The Stoics have been reading Seneca,

I have it right here.

The Stoics,

I think their philosophy can be summarized a little as,

Be a damn decent person.

It's not that hard.

You know what it is.

I mean,

Maybe it's hard,

But it's not that hard to define what it is to be decent.

That's the goal.

If we need ordinances,

If we need Torah and scripture and practices,

All the better.

One of the vows meant a lot in the olden days – it's weird to call it – in the ancient world,

They didn't have written contracts.

You took a vow,

And your soul was in the balance.

Your word meant a lot,

As I think they said in the wire and elsewhere,

Probably in Illmatic by Nas.

My word is my bond,

Right?

So in this week's Torah reading,

They talk about don't even put off fulfilling a vow.

Be truthful.

Support what you say.

Be reliable and credible,

But also be charitable.

So our sages in various centuries say that this is a reference to leaving gleanings and leaving the forgotten sheaths and leaving the corners of the field.

This is a reference to charity,

Right?

These all count as vows,

Whether we vowed them actively and orally or not.

We are required to be communally-minded to support each other.

It's nice to be distinct.

It's nice to be ironic.

It's nice to be quirky and paradoxical.

I think those are all really important things for artists and all of us to understand our own weirdness and quirkiness and uniqueness,

And that we as unique,

Distinct,

Odd people exist within a network of interdependence.

We owe each other.

We have vowed to each other to participate,

And we participate in rituals that make us refined,

That teach us mercy.

We cannot close our eyes and remain in our studio and just paint and just scrawl and just write,

But we have a relationship to the world at large.

We cannot,

To use one of the words that I love in the Torah this week,

Hitalem,

Which means to make oneself disappear.

We cannot be absent from social intercourse.

We cannot be absent and make ourselves disappear from the suffering of others.

As Rashi says,

You cannot overcome your eyes as though you don't see.

That's an obscenity.

I want to finish with a story about that,

One of my favorite stories.

This is in the Jerusalem Talmud,

Which is not the main document of the Talmud.

I just think it's a funny story with a good point.

Alexander the Great came to see the king of Qatia.

I don't know who the king of Qatia was and why Alexander the Great would visit a minor fiefdom.

He was probably a king of some Near Eastern principality,

Imagined or real,

And was shown much silver or gold.

Said he,

I didn't come to see your silver and gold.

I came to see your laws and customs.

Silver and gold is nice too.

As they were sitting,

Two people came for litigation before the king of Qatia.

One of them said,

My master,

My king,

I purchased a ruin from my friend.

I demolished it and found a hidden treasure inside it.

I said to him,

Take your treasure.

I purchased a ruin,

Not a treasure.

The other one says,

Just as you fear the punishment of theft,

So do I.

I sold you the ruin and everything in it,

From the depths of the earth to the heights of the heavens,

Which was the nature of vow and contract.

The king summoned one of them and asked,

Do you have a son?

He said,

Yes.

He summoned the other one and asked,

Do you have a daughter?

He said,

Yes.

Let them marry each other and the treasure will remain shared by your families.

I don't know if that's a good solution,

But it's intended to echo the wisdom of Solomon,

Let's say.

So Alexander the Great was amazed.

The king said to him,

Didn't I rule well?

And he said,

No,

You didn't.

The king says,

Well,

To Alexander,

If such a case come before you in your country,

What would you do?

And Alexander said,

I'd cut off both their heads and send the treasure to the royal palace.

So the king of Qatia said to Alexander,

This is where it gets good,

Does the sun shine in your country?

And Alexander said,

Yes.

He says,

Do you get rain?

And Alexander says,

Yes.

And he says,

Perhaps there are cattle and herds in your land?

And Alexander said,

Of course there are.

And he says,

By my life,

Said the king of Qatia,

It's just for the sake of the cattle and herds that you have sun and rain.

You people are so awful and wicked and your laws are so corrupt and unfair and unwise,

Unjust and selfish.

The only thing that saves your land is the fact that there are suffering animals.

It's a great and snarky comment,

Which I doubt anyone would ever have said to Alexander the Great,

But it's a beautiful way comically to underline the importance of attending to each other and building just societies where we can be distinct,

Unique,

Odd,

Quirky,

Irreverent,

And also reverent,

And also at the same time compassionate and also empathetic with each other.

Take that paradox with you.