Searching for a Calling
“All the voices of the wood called ‘Muriel!’”
So starts the poem “Then I Saw What The Calling Was” by 20th century Jewish-American poet Muriel Rukeyser. What a wonder, to walk through the world and feel called by each creature, to know: I am known! I belong and I matter. My life has significance.
Our Torah portion, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, contains one of the most mysterious callings in the entire Torah, a calling not from the voices of the wood but from the voice behind all voices, the Source of Creation. God tells Moses: “Speak to the whole community of Yisrael and say to them: ‘You shall be holy (kedoshim tih’yu) because I, God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
Holiness is the mysterious vocation of the Jewish people.
How are we to be holy? Leviticus 18:3 clarifies that it means to walk a different path from other peoples: “You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws.”
Holiness comes with responsibility and ethical ambition, not arrogance and ethnic exclusivity: “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I Adonai am your God” (Leviticus 19:34).
Holiness is intrinsic to the idea of being a “chosen people”: “For you are a holy people to Adonai your God, and God has chosen you to be God’s treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6, and 14:2). The Jewish people have a calling, an aspiration, a significant difference to live out in the world.
Or do they? In the continuation of Muriel Rukeyser’s poem, the voices she hears calling her name suddenly reveal themselves in part as her own projected desire for special significance.
“All the voices of the wood called “Muriel!”but it was soon solved; it was nothing, it was not for me.The words were a little like Mortal and More and EndureAnd a world like Real, a sound like Health or Hell.”
In the verbal Rorschach test, she heard all of these words that are a little like “Muriel” and mistook them for a personal calling out. But actually, she wasn’t that special.
In the haftarah (selection from the biblical prophets) that accompanies our Torah portion, the specialness of being chosen gets destabilized as well.
“To Me, O Israelites, you are
Just like the Cushites
—declares Adonai.
True, I brought Israel up
From the land of Egypt,
But also the Philistines from Caphtor
And the Arameans from Kir.” (Amos 9:7)
Oh! There’s obviously a lot to unpack here theologically and politically. The deliberate pairing of the Torah portion and Haftarah by the ancient rabbis makes me think that they wanted us to wrestle with this deep need to be special. To acknowledge how much of our behavior stems from a need to be seen, to make a difference, to have a purpose, to belong and matter. And to be wary of the harms that can result from the self-centered desire to be superior. That yearning to matter (or the deep despair and anger of not mattering) has started wars and ended them, has sparked violence and pushed some into the good fight and ennobled others to remarkable feats of peacemaking.
Although the Jewish tradition generally leans heavily on us having a calling (with the rare exception like the Amos text), Muriel Rukeyser gives us a different perspective. A secular world where no one - God or creature or person - is necessarily calling to her at all. It is a lonely world in a way, one that has resonated with me from time to time, where I begin to wonder - do I matter? Do I have a purpose? Where do I belong? How do I gather the facts of my experience into something meaningful? What do I do with a lurking fear that the universe is indeed random, and nothing matters? What’s the point of it all? These questions sound melodramatic, but how we answer them has a direct impact on our well-being. Humans need significance to survive. Luckily, Rukeyser moves through her own destabilizing awareness that no one is calling to her in an extraordinary way:
“Then I saw what the calling was: it was the road I traveled,the cleartime and these colors of orchards, gold behind gold and the fullshadow behind each tree and behind each slope. Not to methe calling, but to anyone and at last I saw: wherethe road lay through sunlight and many voices and the marvelorchards, not for me, not for me, not for me.I came into my clear being; uncalled, alive, and sure.Nothing was speaking to me, but I offered and all was well.
And I arrived at the powerful green hill.”
May you come into your clear being, and rededicate yourself to what you have to offer.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
