Chametz and Olam Haba

I heard through the grapevine that a friend of a friend undertook this year's Pesach observance in an ultra-serious frame of mind, determined to be observant of every detail and not let one crumb of chametz get through the cracks. My first reaction was to admire this person's conscientiousness. Would that we go at all our undertakings in that serious, determined frame of mind! How much we would accomplish!

Then I heard of this friend's underlying motivation. If she were not to succeed in having her Pesach totally chametz-free, she might lose her personal immortality, her place in "Olam Ha-Ba" (the "World to Come"). My immediate reaction to this was: Superstition.

But the shared news got me thinking. How could someone have come up with an idea like that in the first place—that the God of the universe would respond to someone's failure to observe this ritual 100% by taking away their immortality [or to put it more bluntly, by killing them]?

How could anyone believe in a God that had those values?

As I thought about it more, it seemed there was a pretty reasonable explanation how this belief could have come about (which does not make the belief itself any more rational). Two factors interacted: the vague but imperious way in which certain commands of the Torah are expressed, and the psychological makeup of the person who is susceptible to certain kinds of appeals.

As to the first, the attentive reader is likely to be impressed by the dramatic way in which the Biblical text emphasizes the importance of certain mitzvot. It says that whoever transgresses X "v-nikhretah ha-nefesh ha-hi me-ameha"—"and that soul shall be cut off from its people."

That language occurs for a small number of mitzvot, among them:

• Doing work on Shabbat
• Not afflicting oneself on Yom Kippur
• Failing to participate in the Paschal sacrifice
• Eating chametz on Pesach
• Violating the incest prohibitions of Leviticus Chapter 18
• Eating the blood or fat of sacrificial animals, that ought to have been God's portion, offered on the altar

These were considered pretty serious violations. Eating pork, by comparison, suffered only the penalty that you became "unclean" (tamei) by doing so.

But in Biblical times people didn't have the evolved view of "olam ha-ba" that the rabbis developed. "Being cut off from your people" meant simply that — ostracism, being cut off from social and communal ties with the folk. We can infer from this the positive side of all these injunctions: identifying oneself with the Israelite people meant that one took these obligations seriously. They were singled out as core obligations that were central to identifying with the people of Israel. Defining these as core obligations was effective—it left an impress that lasted over the millenia. It is instructive that to this day, Yom Kippur and Pesach rank very high in broad-based participation among all kinds of Jews, as borne out by recent sociological surveys.

In post-Biblical times, the Jewish world-view underwent a transformation. "Olam Ha-Ba" (with its dual meaning of Messianic times and personal immortality) became a central belief, whereas in Biblical times it was unkown. Accordingly, the rabbis had to interpret the punishment of "karet" (being "cut off") in terms of the new world-view. According to one view, it meant that one was condemned to childlessness. According to another view, it meant that one got a lesser share of "Olam Ha-Ba"—or in the extreme case, none at all. But this dire fate was mitigated to a large extent by the prevailing doctrines of repentance and working off one's sins through punishment. Eventually, most people (who had not committed ax-murder or genocide) could gain forgiveness for infractions of their sins, even though the Bible specified "karet" as the ultimate penalty. It was presumed that most ordinary people meant well and were sincere in their wanting to repair their relationship with God, and this would be taken into account. A crumb of chametz on Pesach (or even a sandwich consumed in a rebellious moment, and later repented) was not enough, in the Jewish scheme of things, to forfeit one's personal immortality.

This should help put the first factor into its proper perspective. Yes, there are certain statements in the tradition that could lend themselves to be taken as forfeiting one's "Olam Ha-Ba" by violating the afore-mentioned injunctions. But no, it would take a lot more than that to really bring about such a radical personal undoing.

But then there's the second factor—the personal susceptibility of a lot of individuals (not just this one case) to obsessive and even fanatical religious commitment, as a defense against mortal anxiety. The big truth (the elephant in the room) is that we are mortal, and this is out of our control. We don't have any control over what happens to us when we die. If death is annihilation of our selves — or if there is an afterlife, for good or for bad — we don't get to say, either way. The world is the way it is; we are the way we are.

This brute and inconsiderate fact goes against the grain of those of us who like to be in control of everything — of what college we get into, what career we have, keeping in good health, etc. We don't want to admit that something as major as whether we live or die is out of our control. We are all potentially very susceptible to a program that comes our way and tells us with confidence and authority, "Do A, B, and C, and you are guaranteed immortality! Just sign up and do everything that it says in this book."

There is even something plausible in the view that if we single out just those mitzvot for which the Torah threatens "karet" as violation, and observe them scrupulously, that this is the central, most important part of the Immortality Deal. They are central to Jewish identity, and they also present a significant practical challenge—though not an insuperable one. When we knock ourselves out and are "perfect" in our observance of the Pesach dietary laws for 8 whole days, we feel we have earned something big — maybe even Eternity. Having gone through the 8 Pesach days (or the 25-hour Yom Kippur fast) according to the book, we can now turn to God with our shoulders thrown back and our head up high and tell God: "I've done it! I am truly deserving now. Surely you will grant me Olam Ha-Ba now, for all the sacrifices I have made!"

This is part (though not the whole) of the "Ba'al Teshuva" syndrome that some of us are familiar with—people whom we know, of ordinary background, who feel the strong attraction of an ultra-strict religious regimen for the personal security it offers. The same tendency is more selectively manifested when Jews decide to pick and choose certain observances and do them 200% or 500%. Pesach is very easy to adopt for this strategy. Go crazy-strict for 8 days, but in doing so, you are buying insurance for eternity. It's a very tempting proposition.

But does God really want this kind of extremism? When I look around the world and see the incredible variety that adds to the richness of existence, it seems to me that God is saying in all of this: Be yourself, the best you know how! Take what you do seriously, but don't go crazy over it! Excel in what you do best, but don't sacrifice what is inimitably "you" for a straitjacket of someone else's devising. Honor the traditions you grew up in, but be open to the richness of being around you and enrich yourself by it! And if you ever do come to a point of being judged, you will be judged for the totality of your life, not for this or that one detail.

As Rabbi Akiva said, "B'tuv ha-olam nidon, ve-hakol le-fi rov ha-ma'aseh" — the world is judged in goodness, and it is all according to the preponderance of the deeds (Pirkei Avot Chapter 3).