As I was studying this week’s parashah, Mishpatim, I found myself thinking of Christo-phah. Remember Christo-phah? Not Christopher. Christo-phah. If you’re asking, “Christo-phah who?” then the answer’s no, meaning you probably weren’t a big fan of the Sopranos. But in any event, Christo-phah is a wiseguy, a soldier working his way up through the Mafioso crime family headed by his uncle Tony. And as a soldier, slogging his way through the day-to-day operations of the family, Christo-phah has a big problem. He starts to resent the fact that he’s doing so much of the work, yet getting very little of the reward. He is embittered when the capos rack up restaurant and bar tabs in the thousands of dollars and he’s stuck footing the bill. Even knowing that that’s the system, that that’s just how it works, that if and when he makes it up the ladder, he will be on the receiving end of the hierarchy, this awareness does nothing to blunt his resentment. Christo-phah wants the goodies for himself. He doesn’t want to kick it upstairs.
And that’s what they call it: kicking it upstairs. You see it in Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and the Sopranos. The concept of remembering who came before you, who put in the work and paid their dues to sit where they sit, at the head of the table, and to remember why they’re there in the first place, is not such a bad thing, removed, of course, from the Mafia context. At the end of the day, I’m guessing that a lot of the organizations and businesses in which we work and spend so much of our lives function in a similar manner.
So if that’s true, if that concept makes sense to us with regards to human beings, shouldn’t it be all the more so with God?
The Torah says “yes.” Over and over again. And we find it here, among the many laws and ordinances prescribed in Parashat Mishpatim. In Exodus 22:28 and 29 we read, “You shall not put off the skimming of the first yield of your vats. You shall give Me the male first-born among your children. You shall do the same with your cattle and your flocks; seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me."
While modern scholars may be uncertain as to the execution of this mitzvah, the underlying concept is crystal clear. And that concept is of such significance that it appears, in various permutations, dozens of times throughout the Torah. We might easily dismiss it, throw it on the heap of biblical commandments and constructs we conveniently consider “outdated.” But this one, to be sure, is anything but.
Your first child, first calves of the herd, first lambs of the flock, first fruits and grains of the harvest, even, as we see here, the first yield of your vats—all of it, we kick upstairs. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how hard we’ve worked to farm the land, or take care of the cattle and the sheep; it doesn’t matter how well we did with our report or case or presentation or lesson. Sure, we may have done the work on the ground, on the front lines, so to speak. But who is it that makes all of it possible? Who miraculously created the entire world and everything in it, most especially the extraordinarily talented human being? That’s right: God! Adonai Eloheinu, Ribono shel olam, the Alpha, the Omega, the Master of the Universe, known to some of my rabbinic classmates as Sweet Holy Ha-Shem. And not one kind, important word we say, not one good deed we’ve done for ourselves or others, not one triumphant moment we’ve shared or experienced—absolutely none of it would ever have occurred if it weren’t for God. Even if you call yourself an atheist, or you don’t like using the word “God,” I sincerely doubt that you really take all of the credit for the things you do well, and naturally at that. At least I hope you don’t. Because if you really think about it, those skills and talents that seem to have come from within you, that more often than not simply cannot be taught in a classroom or a seminar, they point to something beyond our physical selves, something that accounts for their existence, regardless of what you choose to call it.
And that’s how it is for me. I confess that Tali hates it when I occasionally come home from teaching or giving a sermon and I say something like “I think I did well tonight” or “I feel really great about how that went.” But for me, while I certainly feel it’s important to have a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, I’m okay saying those things because they’re not really about me. They are, ultimately, a tribute to God. At the end of the day, I chalk it all up to the Holy One, the Source of any talents and gifts with which I have been blessed.
More than that, I can’t tell you how often, in just these first few years of my rabbinate, that I’ve found myself in challenging, deeply intense conversations with many of you—about life and death and illness touching your lives, things you’re struggling with that keep you up at night—where I just don’t know what words I can possibly offer to be of help or guidance. Yet, somehow, some way, something comes out of me. And somehow, time and time again, it’s just right, and people will tell me later that I said just the thing they wanted and, more importantly, most needed to hear.
My friends, that’s not me. That’s ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, coming over me, speaking through me. And without that, without God, I am nothing but dust and ashes. Without God, what I achieve in this world amounts to precious little.
So unlike Christo-phah, I have no problem kicking it upstairs. And maybe, just maybe, you won’t either.
SHABBAT SHALOM.
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