{"id":47638,"date":"2019-01-16T22:58:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T20:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=47638"},"modified":"2022-08-10T18:17:33","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T15:17:33","slug":"a-covenant-of-salt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-covenant-of-salt\/","title":{"rendered":"A Covenant Of Salt?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cAll the gifts of the holy [offerings] which are set aside by the children of Israel for the Lord I have given to you\u2026it is like an eternal covenant of salt before the Lord, for you and your descendants with you” (18:19).<\/span><\/p>\n

What does that mean? What is a covenant of salt?<\/span><\/p>\n

The 18<\/span>th<\/span> century Hasidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explains that this covenant is connected to the deeds of Korach, who argued that everyone was holy, and therefore everyone should be priests.<\/span><\/p>\n

The priests, he writes, represent the divine attribute of \u201cchesed<\/em>\u201d (lovingkindness), whereas the<\/span> Levites represent the divine attribute of \u201cdin<\/em>\u201d (justice, or gevurah<\/em> in the sefirotic tree) the quality of boundaries and strength. The problem with Korach\u2019s rebellion was that it left no room for <\/span>din<\/span><\/em>. He wanted everyone to be pure <\/span>chesed<\/span><\/em>, but in truth, the world needs judgment and justice, boundaries, and strength too. <\/span><\/p>\n

Centuries earlier Ramban explained salt as a combination of fire and water, which is to say, justice and lovingkindness. He says it’s the combination of those two, the appropriate balance of those two, which sustains all the worlds. <\/span><\/p>\n

Rav Levi Yitzchak thus teaches that the covenant of salt (representing the balance of <\/span>chesed<\/em> <\/span>and <\/span>din<\/span><\/em>) came as a response to Korach’s actions, in order to remind us of what’s wrong with Korach’s imbalanced view. The world needs an appropriate balance of lovingkindness and justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading this passage, I marvel at how contemporary and real it feels. I’ve been in contexts where people want everyone and everything to be all-<\/span>chesed<\/span><\/em>-all-the-time, and they are not healthy at all. Love that flows without boundaries is a flood, destructive and damaging. When we over-privilege <\/span>chesed<\/span><\/em> at the expense of <\/span>din<\/span><\/em>, there are no appropriate roles or boundaries… and a community in which roles and boundaries are not honored is a community that will inevitably be rife with ethical violations and abuse. <\/span><\/p>\n

John Lennon may have written that “all you need is love,” but on a spiritual level, he was wrong. The world needs judgment, discernment, and justice every bit as much as it needs unbridled or unbounded love — indeed, as Ramban notes, a world that has only one half of that critical binary cannot endure. <\/span><\/p>\n

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