I am always amazed when I read of someone else who uses one of the very same jokes I use. I am amazed, because they must be incredibly old. I say that because my jokes are incredibly old, just like me. And I am even more amazed when they use the same incredibly old joke to make exactly same point I make.
I have never met Rabbi Yossy Goldman, but he used this joke to make the same point. If he is not old like me, then maybe he heard it from his grandparents.
The Joke:
Jack Benny, whose comic persona included being very cheap, tells of walking downtown in New York City. Suddenly, he feels a gun in his back, and a gruff voice demands, “Your money or your life!” When he does not respond right away, the demand is repeated even louder, “Your money or your life!” Benny replies, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
I would suggest that this joke is at the core of the Shema, which we read in this week’s Torah Portion, and explains the perplexing question in Judaism’s second oldest ritual. So let’s take these two in order.
The Shema:
After we read the Shema, we are told that we are to love the Lord ‘with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might’. Simple, of course, as long as we know what heart, soul, and might mean.
Heart is not very difficult, because we know that the heart was the seat of the intellect, not the seat of emotion. The Hebrew word for soul (nefesh) actually meant the body all through the time of the Bible. Nefesh occurs 685 times in the Tanach (Old Testament) and NEVER means soul. And might refers to our resources, as the great rabbinic commentator Rashi explained more than 1,000 years ago. So the phrase really means, “Love the Lord with your mind, your body and your material resources.”
The Ritual:
The second oldest ritual in all of Judaism (after circumcision) is Pidyon Ha-Ben, the redemption of the first-born son for 5 shekels – 5 silver dollars. This ritual, which has always been practiced by Orthodox Jews and is actually making a comeback in Progressive Judaism (including redeeming daughters), dates back to the establishment of a legal system by Moses with the help of his father-in-law, Jethro, the Midianite High Priest.
In this ritual the Cohen asks the parents a strange question, “Which would you prefer, your first born or the 5 shekels of silver you are obligated to give me?”
What a ridiculous question! Or is it?
As parents you must decide, what is going to be the most important thing in your child’s life – the Shema and all it represents or money? Are you going to focus solely on the child’s financial needs, or are you going to offer that child your physical and intellectual gifts as well?
This choice is really no joke.
B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern