Tamim tihiyeh im Hashem Elokekha. Be tamim, innocent or whole-hearted, with Hashem your God (Deuteronomy 18:13).
The Unblemished Place Inside
This same word tamim is used often with reference to sacrifices to mean “unblemished.” I wonder if it has a flavor of that here as well – that to be tamim is to find the place inside you that is pure and unblemished by all the burdens and wounds and judgments that weigh you down and confuse you, and to live from that unblemished place, to live from that pure essence of self, from the place where you are im Hashem Elokekha, im meaning “with,” aligned with, Hashem your God, aligned with the divine in you in particular, Hashem Elokekha, your God in the singular, the place that is your unique true divine spark, untarnished by all the shoulds and traumas that have marred you and covered over your essence. No matter what has happened to us, we all have this tamim place.
This tamim place is a simple pure place of existence, a dot of divine aliveness at the very core of your being. Maybe you can imagine all those other layers – the self denigration and the irritability and the busyness and everything else that stands in the way – as soft veils that you pull apart one after another, making your way toward the center, your center, a pure dot of light. This is where you are im Hashem Elokekha, where you are truly with Hashem your God in particular, where there is complete alignment with the divine in you. When everything else fades away, you can sit in this place of light and feel the direct connection to God, your own pure divine essence. Tamim tiheyeh – Be there, be in this tamim place. Dwell there.
Yaakov: Dwelling There
Yaakov is described as ish tam yoshev ohelim (Genesis 26:27), using the word tam – related to tamim – meaning “simple.” Yaakov was “a simple person dwelling in tents.” This is the image for us, too. There are many tents, many layers of outer covering, and we move through them, deeper and deeper into their midst, parting each tent’s doorway flaps one after another until we are at the center of all the tents, at our simplest tam tamim essence, and there we are yoshev, we dwell, like Yaakov, in that light.
The Simple Child’s Question: What Is The Core
In the haggadah, the tam child, the simple child, asks the question – mah zot, “what is this?” This is the question we ask inside from a tam stance. We look inside and come back to basics and say – what is this – what really matters to me, what is my core made of. Not – what do I need to run around and do, what are people wanting from me, but – what is here inside, who am I am at my core, looking with curiosity and beginning to know our own simple pure essence.
Matching Our Inner and Our Outer Lives
Even when we come to know our true essence, it is very hard to live from this place, to live, in other words, with integrity, tocho kebaro, our inside like our outside. Yaakov himself struggled with this. He may have been tam, simple and pure, when dwelling inside his own tents, but when he went out to deal with others like his father, he put on a mask and a costume; he hid who he really was, becoming untruthful.
Perhaps this is why, though Yaakov is known as tam, he is not known as tamim. The two words are the same except that tamim is a kind of plural version of tam, tam intensified, or maybe tam radiated outwards, lived into in the outer world. It is one thing to know your inner truth – not a small feat on its own – but it is another to live that truth with integrity in the multiplicity of the world, to radiate out the truth of your essence like a flower radiates its bright colors out from its center to its multiple petals.
Noah: Integrity Even In His Generation
The character in the Torah who is known to be tamim is Noah. Tamim haya bedorotav (Genesis 6:9), the Torah says. He was tamim in his generation. He had integrity even in his generation, even in an antagonistic milieu. That’s where the rubber meets the road, with others in the world, in your generation, in your social context. Can you hold your own with others who disagree? What the Torah is telling us here is that Noah was able to maintain his connection to his own inner pure essence, to his divine truth, even while those around him held vastly opposing views. Others came and laughed at him for building his ark, deriding his truth, and he went right on building it, holding fast to that inner divine place of knowing. Tamim hayah bedorotav.
To be tamim is to stay steadfast with Hashem your God, to stay steadfastly aligned to the divine truth inside you, no matter what others say or what the social norm is. This tamim verse in our parsha comes immediately after prohibitions against following the ways of the other nations around you (Deuteronomy 18:9ff). Don’t be like them, the Torah says. Don’t follow the norms of those around you. Be tamim, like Noah, be true to your own pure essence. Maybe you can sense the pressures, both conscious and unconscious, the pressures to conform to social norms, both those in the larger world and those in our communities and social circles and families, all the forces and shoulds that weigh on us to be a certain way, noticing those pressures and returning to that simple tam place inside you of knowing who you really are. You are like a tree, fiercely rooted in your own core essence, unswayed by the winds around you. Others can disagree, but you will stay with yourself and your truth.
The Piaseczner Rebbe: As Innocent as a Plant or a Child
The Piaseczner Rebbe considers temimut, living with this kind of innocence or integrity, of utmost importance in religious life (Bney Machshavah Tovah, Section 15). He makes the comparison to a plant and to a child. When a plant grows, he says, it does not do so in order to show off or to please others. It grows and blossoms out of a natural instinct to express itself, to be itself in the world. There is no pretense or mask. It is always purely itself. A child, too, the Piaseczner Rebbe says, has this kind of purity and innocence. If you ask a young child a question, the question penetrates deep into his soul and the response comes from that untainted place. What the child says is an expression of his inner truth. There is no attempt to manipulate the answer to please you or to make himself seem smart or to protect himself or you from embarrassment. It is just pure self expression, like the flower.
We can notice how far we are from this innocence, the great distance between our inner truth, that place of unblemished divine essence, and what we actually express to each other, how we do shift and craft our words to try to control and manage our image, what others will think of us and how we will be received. We bend ourselves into pretzels to please and protect and manage, and in the process, our truth is lost. We become not like a flower reaching up for the sun, but like a flower so contorted, no one recognizes that it even is a flower.
What would it be like to return to that child innocence, when we speak, to speak from that deep place inside us? If it is hurtful, the Piaseczner Rebbe says, ok, don’t speak, but when you do speak, speak your truth. Be as tamim, as innocent as the child, uncalculating and uninhibited and unashamed, not controlled by the norms or the expectations of those around you, but staying true to that unblemished pure place inside.
The Intimacy of Integrity
You might be thinking: but we need these social graces to get along with each other. Maybe with some people some of the time, but there is also a great loss of intimacy and connection when we don’t speak our truth to one another. One of the most important words in this pasuk is im, “with.” To be tamim, to have this kind of integrity, is to learn to truly be im, “with” another – to truly be with God and to truly be with each other, to know and see and understand each other, to connect from deep to deep. We can only do that if we are in our truth and present our truth honestly to each other. Otherwise it is only our masks that are in relationship.
Respecting Each Other’s Boundaries
Relating to each other with this deep honesty and integrity involves respecting each others’ truth and wholeness. When we manipulate how we express our truth to align with what we think another person is expecting or to try to convince or control them or avoid conflict, we are not respecting the other person’s wholeness, that they, too, have a tamim place. In this same parsha, a mere chapter later, there is another commandment – lo tasig gevul re’ekha – don’t break your fellow’s boundaries (Deuteronomy 19:14). Don’t overextend into their territory, physical or emotional. Let each person have her truth and her space. You stay in your integrity and let them stay in their integrity.
And Still Having An Impact
Not that we don’t impact or influence each other. God said to Avraham – hithalekh lefanay veheyeh tamim (Genesis 17:1). Walk out before me and be tamim, be pure, have integrity. Avraham walked out into the world and shared his inner truth from this deep place inside him, and unlike Noah, he had an impact. People were drawn to his truthfulness. When we act and speak from this honest pure place, our light radiates outwards, like the flower’s colorful petals extending outwards. We shine and share that inner truth and it has an effect without our needing to control or manage it.
Returning to Your Tamim Place
As we close, I invite you to return to your tamim place deep inside, behind all the curtains and the veils and the tent flaps – behind all the people-pleasing and the obligations and the insecurity and the to do list – returning to that tamim place where you are simply im, “with” Hashem your God, your God in particular, and sitting there, dwelling there, like Yaakov, letting yourself be saturated by a sense of your own pure unblemished essence.
