Among other bodily fluids, the double parashah which is this week’s Torah reading, Tazria-Metzora, focuses upon blood. The blood of a woman giving birth is one of the most holy substances that exists. In our clumsy translations of the ancient Hebrew, we refer to that which is holy as that which “makes the hands unclean.” It is true of the blood of childbirth and it is also described by the Rabbis of the Talmud as the status of the Torah.
Clearly, ritual purity and impurity are not well understood by moderns. We’ve lost some essential thread along with our proclivity to turn away from the topics of sex and death as unsayable; we consign both to invisibility for anyone not intimately linked in the moment. That for sure was not our ancestors’ reality, and it has made it overwhelming for many of us to face blood.
Yet we are surrounded by blood these days, and not the kind which brings life, but rather its dread – and inevitable – other face. As of this morning, as I write, there have been one hundred and sixty three mass shootings in the United States in 2023. Surrounded by such a horrifying and overwhelming amount of bloodshed, we are numbed. Speechless.
Our ancestors, who lived on a much smaller scale than we, saw any blood at all as a substance to be treated with great thoughtfulness and care. The blood of a sacrifice must be poured out, since it belongs to HaShem. The blood of childbirth must be respected as holy.
From some great anthropological height of observation, all the bloodshed of wars and mass shootings and the individual murders that shake our hearts to tears must have some meaning. But from our human distance, it is nothing but overwhelming. Confounding. Heart-stopping.
We have no reasonable answers for those who defend the rights of gun owners and the immunity of gun sellers. We have no easy words for grieving parents or for children who must learn this generation’s form of duck and cover. For all this agony we have only this: ancient words of our people’s deep lived wisdom.
“I passed you and saw you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you, in your blood you shall live” (Ezekiel 16:6) – this is the blood of the paschal offering. “I said to you, in your blood you shall live” – this is the blood of circumcision. – Shir haShirim Rabbah 5.2.2
If blood, the holiest substance of our lives, is to be shed, it should be shed in holiness. Blood, Ezekiel says, is meant as a sign of community, and of life.
May we come to see this respect for every drop of human blood – of all blood and all life – manifest in our world. May our hands and our hearts stay strong for the work of bringing it about.
“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
Passover has passed over us; as of sundown yesterday the Festival is over. Passover, or, in Hebrew, Pesakh (which means “skipping over”) is a time when many Jews who may not follow much in the way of traditional Jewish practice nevertheless avoid leaven. Even young children get it pretty clearly: if you are Jewish, you do not eat bread for a week (literally 8 days) every year.
The Torah puts it clearly: those who ignore this prohibition cut themselves off from the community of Israel. And indeed, Pesakh has become a significant identity marker for Jews. Perhaps that’s why there are so many “kosher for Passover” items available for us; during this week, the more different we eat, the more we can feel it.
Now the week is over, all the leftover Passover items are going on sale, and now quickly come days more recently set in recognition of profound post-Egypt aspects of Jewish identity, each one asking, in its own way, who are you as a free Jew? Or as parashat Shemini puts it, the Mishkan is erected and the sacrifice has been brought; what is the content of the blessing? Who are you in relationship to this new sense of we, the Jewish people?
Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of ‘ה appeared to all the people. – VaYikra 9.23
Who are you in relationship to the Holocaust?
Yom HaShoah v’haG’vurah, the day of remembering Holocaust and Heroism, begins next Monday night April 17 at sundown. Our entire community is invited, as one is invited to a funeral; by showing up we demonstrate our support for those mourning the catastrophic losses of a terrible time.
Who are you in relationship to the State of Israel?
Yom HaAtzma’ut, the day of marking the birth of the modern State of Israel, begins Tuesday April 25 at sundown. Israel’s 75th birthday is an excellent time for learning and for discussion. You can learn here: The Torah of Israel and Palestine and here: Jewish Literacy.
Pesakh has ended, the question remains: Who are you as a Jew, who might attend and participate in these observances? Who might you be as a free person who chooses Jewish commitment to our community and the history that informs it?
The central obligation of Pesakh is to free oneself and to help others become free of enslavement. This is not easy; certainly it is easier to avoid leaven – to follow a prohibition – than it is to take a real step toward human freedom. We are not even sure what it might look like, and in his book Escape From Freedom Erich Fromm went so far as to say that we don’t really want the responsibility that comes with freedom.
It’s easier to do what those around us are doing, and so to feel safe and included. But thoughtlessly following what others are doing is the root of fascism. Yet Jews who understand themselves to be part of a living community know that when one is free to truly examine one’s own sense of self and potential, it is exhilarating to find a community that enhances and supports one’s sense of self by offering companions who follow a similar path.
This path that we belong to is ancient, and it is ours: we are re-membering as we go, and when we can’t remember it, we are creating it, together.
Once we were a free people, free from antisemitism, and free to thrive within a tribe where each person counted and was needed. So much has happened to pull us apart and alienate us from each other in the last two thousand years. But our tradition insists that we are still one people, with one path that we walk together, in mutual support and respect and joy.
May each day of our Omer counting bring you opportunities to remember our people’s history, and may that history fill you with the joyful realization that you are part of us, you belong.
[Rabbi Akiba said:] The whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies. (Mishnah Yadayim 3.5)
On Passover we relive the Exodus from Egypt, and on this Shabbat of Passover we will observe the crossing of the Yam Suf, the “Sea of Reeds” (mistakenly called the Red Sea in Western translations). In the Hallel we’ll recite highly stylized verses of praise for the escape through water which we survived and our persecutors did not – although the songs are truncated, to express our regret that others died while we lived.
We’ll also recite Yizkor, the prayers in memory of our dead loved ones whom we especially remember during holidays like Passover. Holidays bring the memories of the missing at our table sharply into focus. Yizkor (“let the memory survive”) is traditionally recited on the last day of the holiday, but at Shir Tikvah we include it in our Shabbat observance of Pesakh, Shavuot and Sukkot.
So much of what we have always done for nearly two thousand years was first created out of pre-existing rituals and remembrances by the Rabbis of the Talmud Bavli, those survivors of the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem who carried the memories and crafted the placeholders for them. Over time, what was meant to be temporary became permanent when enough generations were born who never knew the earlier way of being, since homelessness had become their inheritance.
We can trace the Hallel songs to the Second Temple, and see how they remind us of the Pesakh Festival in Jerusalem; we can understand the development of Yizkor as a natural part of home- and family-centered ritual. But what is the Song of Songs, traditionally chanted on this Shabbat of the intermediate days of Passover, doing here? And why did the famous Rabbi Akiba famously insist that the Song of Songs is the holiest book of the Tanakh?
The Song of Songs, attributed to King Shlomo, is a beautiful collection of love poetry common in the ancient Mediterranean:
“Kiss me…for your love is more delightful than wine.” (Song of Songs 2.2)
“Whenever you are seen in every glance, it is more delightful for me than eating and drinking.” (From an Egyptian love song cited by Fishbane, The Song of Songs: JPS Commentary)
“I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride” (Song of Songs 5.1)
“I went down to the garden of your love.” (Mesopotamian love song cited by Fishbane)
From these examples we can see that a healthy appreciation of lovers for each other’s physical bodies was part of the ancient cultures in which our people appeared and developed. But there is much more hinted at here, because when we look at rabbinic commentary, it is made absolutely clear by the Rabbis that this entire Song is to be understood only in rabbinic terms, which treat the book as an allegory for the love between HaShem and the people of Israel.
The Rabbis absolutely forbid us to see the Song of Songs as a love poem between two people. Why? As we regularly wonder in Talmud study class, when did sex, and physicality, become so problematic for the Jewish people?
We know that some aspects of our religious practice as it naturally developed ended up being ruled out of Judaism not for some internal fault but because of contemporary competing belief systems. The Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Utterances, were removed from the early siddur because “heretics insisted that only the Ten Utterances were given at Sinai, and the rest is made up.” The near absence of Moshe, nearly deified by ancient Israelites, from Rabbinic practice may be due to the rise of the early Christians, who deified a human being.
Similarly, the Song of Songs may have been interpreted nearly out of existence because it is the Jewish version of the hieros gamos, the “sacred wedding” understood to be a necessary human ritual to bring about fertility throughout ancient Mesopotamia. In this ritual, the goddess was personified by a priestess who, in a highly developed ritual of physical intercourse with the king representing his people demonstrated the bringing together of Heaven and Earth – rain and sun from above for the orchards, fields and vines below. All depended upon the success of the ritual intercourse every year. You can read a famous poem recited during the yearly ritual here: Innana and Dumuzi.
Jewish mystical tradition, which may very well preserve ancient beliefs no longer accepted as normative for the Jewish people by the rabbis, depicts the Jewish version of this sacred intercourse:
The erotic desire spoken by the female persona in the Song is applied by the Zoharic authorship to the divine feminine, Shekhinah, which is identified further as the Community of Israel, the symbolic collective constituted paradigmatically by the fraternity of male mystics. Shekhinah utters words of longing before the masculine potency, for in the state of exile she is separated from him. The hieros gamos [“sacred wedding”] occurs within the spatial confines of the holy of holies, the innermost sanctum of the Temple, but since in the time of exile the latter is not standing, there is no space wherein the union can be fully realized. Hence the feminine expresses her yearning to cohabit with the masculine, to inhabit the same space, nay to be the secret space wherein the phallic foundation is laid. (Elliot Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination)
What can we do with the Songs of Songs in our day, on the cusp of the Third Era of Jewish life, when the rabbinic interpretations are no long our only guide to understanding our past and how we might weave it into our future?
When we note that according to Wolfson, the community of Israel is feminine although its members are only men, we see an irony that is an opening to a different kind of understanding. That makes it our fascinating task to add the latest layer of conversation, of commentary, to our people’s path. We can see the tragedy of the rift between male and female as personal, demonstrating each individual’s desire for wholeness rather than in a restrictive heterosexual-normative way. And we can see it as a social catastrophe, leading to the oppression of women, who have fallen from goddesses to either virgins or whores in much of western religion, including Judaism.
And most personally, here we have the chance to name and seek out the physical healing we need: the holiness expressed by a woman’s body in childbirth is the most precious aspect of humanity. Without it none of us exist. How is it that we have come to a time when a female presenting person or a transgender man is embarrassed by menstrual flow? We should all be singing the highest praises of all to the power that allows for life. That is the holy of holies.
Shabbat Shalom and mo’adim l’simkha, may the Intermediate Days of the Festival bring you joy
This Shabbat is called Shabbat haGadol, “the Great Shabbat” and it is always the Shabbat that directly precedes Pesakh. Today, erev Shabbat, is 9 Nisan, and as 15 Nisan begins next Wednesday at sundown, Jews everywhere will observe the beginning of the oldest Jewish holy day.
Our tradition urges us to see every day as a new thing; how much more so our observance of the most ancient of our holy days! We are to see ourselves as freed from slavery next Wednesday evening. It’s interesting to consider our parashah in that light; in parashat Tzav we read instructions for different sacrifices and then of the initiation of the priests into their brand new role. It’s a time of excitement and enjoyment of a brand new shiny thing: our new Mishkan and the service which will be carried out within it.
So much is on the cusp, so much is promising. Yet where human beings are concerned, there is still so much room for error, and for suffering.
And God said to Moses, “I will be what I will be,” continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘I Will Be sent me to you.’” (Shemot 3.14)
This erev Shabbat coincides with March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility, a national day to celebrate our Trans loved ones. Advances in science, society and culture have made each of us more able to express our inmost sense of being Who We Will Be, and this is holy, as we each explore the ways in which we reflect HaShem, the I Will Be.
Young eager spirits reach out for this promise of Being, and so we see all around us the newness of Spring, as all of us are invited to grow more and more into our wholeness, to seek out and bring into the light all of what we are meant to be. Only the murderous Pharaoh alive in our own age would call this evil;
Each of us is called upon to see ourselves as being freed from slavery on Shabbat HaGadol. The most important mitzvah we observe on this Festival of Matzot is eating matzah. Only the unleavened form of the staff of life is permitted to us for the eight days of Pesakh. Even the gluten free must join the Jewish people in observing the mitzvah, for it is an important identity marker of Jewish belonging.
Why does so much depend on matzah?
During the darkest days of the Inquisition through which so many of our people suffered and died, the Inquisitors kept careful notes of the testimonies of witnesses who outed them. Non-Jewish servants often reported on the foods they saw their employers eating as the most obvious signs of covert Jewish practice. Matzah was literally a matter of life and death; to be oneself most fully was to risk death at the hands of bigots.
I invite you to make this matzah in solidarity with our ancestors and with our current loved ones who were and are targeted simply for being who they must be. Share the making with children and/or adult students of Judaism if you can, since embodied mitzvot are the single most effective way to share spiritual tradition. And don’t worry if it doesn’t come out crispy and dry; no Jew ate matzah that resembled a cracker until modern concerns with possible hametz caused Ashkenazi Jews to make their matzah thinner and thinner, drier and drier…see the history here: History of (Ashkenazi) Matzah and you think that all matzah is that way because your experience is what we call Ashkenormative (unless you are of Sephardi or Mizrakhi or Habesha or other non-ashkenazi descent and are still in touch with your culture).
And however you get the matzah that you taste next Wednesday night, whether with other Jews or by yourself, whether homemade or a store-bought brand, taste it with intention. See if you can taste the spiritual moment of feeling that you will be what you will – yet – Be.
רבי יוסי בן חנינה אומר ועשית כפרת זהב טהור, יבא זהב כפורת ויכפר על זהב עגל
R. Yossi ben Hanina says: “Then you shall make a kappōret of pure gold …” (Exod. 25:17)—Let the gold of the kappōret atone [yekhaper] for the gold of the calf.
This Shabbat is Shabbat Parah, Shabbat of the [red] Heifer, so called because of the special extra reading added to the regular parashat hashavua. As one of the Four special Shabbatot that count us down to Pesakh, on it we include the recipe for ritual purification. One had to be tahor, ritually ready, in order to offer a sacrifice, and the entire people were meant to participate in the upcoming Passover sacrifice.
Our Shabbat Ki Tisa is about another kind of cow: the Golden Calf. What does the juxtaposition of Purim, which we celebrated this week, have to do with this story?
On Purim we are to upend and dethrone every sacred cow; on this Shabbat Ki Tisa we suffer the consequences of choosing the wrong time to question authority, and reject it.
A word fitly spoken Is like apples of gold in settings of silver
– Mishle (Proverbs)25.11
If it is not “fitly spoken,” at the right time in the right way, the Rabbis tell us, it would be better not to speak at all. Is it is a Red Heifer or a Golden Calf? Without history, without context, without details, we cannot say.
On Monday night, we were to make light of everything – to eat, drink and be merry, the better to bear our lives with grace. This Shabbat, we relive the catastrophe of the chaos that nearly overtook our people when we “sat down to eat and drink, and then rose to dance” (Shemot – Exodus – 32.6) As Aharon the High Priest might have said, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
We can’t always know in advance how something will turn out – actually we can almost never know. That is how our ancestors learned to define wisdom as
איזהו חכם הרואה את הנולד
Who is the wise person? The one who sees and anticipates the consequences of his behavior.
– Babylonian Talmud Tamid 32a
Life keeps changing. What was an ethical act yesterday may not be so tomorrow, because in each instance the particulars are unique. As the Talmud asserts, the minority opinion today may be the correct decision at some other time.
And life is a constantly changing balance, and we are on the narrow bridge that sways – sometimes toward openness and mercy, sometimes toward setting boundaries and judgement.
The answer we seek may keep changing in its particulars, but for us Jews, barukh haShem (thank G*d) the context is our Torah community.
Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.
I heard this week that Jews are leaving shuls because Soul Cycle gives us everything we need spiritually. So I’m pleased to announce that our shul is in the process of buying 200 stationary bicycles!
Just kidding. That, my beloved companions in Torah, is called Purim Torah. We take everything that we hold sacred and get playful with it. Purim is the holy day upon which we are to transition from winter and its discontents to spring and giggles.
If that seems like a struggle to you, you’re not alone. Consider this Talmudic story:
Rabba and Rabbi Zeira prepared a Purim feast with each other, and they became intoxicated to the point that Rabba arose and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira. The next day, when he became sober and realized what he had done, Rabba asked God for mercy, and revived him.
The next year, Rabba said to Rabbi Zeira: come and let us prepare the Purim feast with each other. Zeira said to him: Miracles do not happen each and every hour! [and I do not want to undergo that experience again.] – BT Megillah 7b
You and I might feel like Rav Zeira – trying for happiness in our lives and getting, metaphorically speaking, murdered. Jewish tradition urges us: mishenikhnas Adar marbim simkha, when Adar begins, simkha increases – but events in Portland, in the U.S., in Israel all seem to conspire against joy.
It’s in this context that we read in our Torah this week, Shabbat Zakhor, that we are commanded to forget Amalek, the Biblical figure who attacks us for no reason, as recorded in parashat Beshalakh. From the Torah until today, our people has a custom to name those who try to erase us as Amalek. (The bad guy in the Purim story is no exception.) What does it mean to erase evil?
Purim in that light is most interesting, because our ancestors were not less challenged than we in this way. They never give in to the world and its threats, though; and so we’re offered the support of a larger perspective, of history and community, to see our lives in some sort of context. Most of all, a community context (with or without bicycles). Amalek doesn’t prevail, after all.
There are only four mitzvot that we are to observe on Purim:
Hear the reading of Megillat Ester, the scroll of Esther – on Monday evening this year, which is Erev Purim
Send gifts to the poor – matanot l’evyonim doesn’t mean only poor in funds but poor in spirit. Who needs a lift? Who might be cheered by the unexpected delivery of a small gift of hamantaschen or some other small treat?
Share gifts with friends – mishlo’akh manot, also called shlakhmanos in some dialects, is a lovely idea because it has nothing to do with need. We’re just sharing some fun.
Feast! Eat something you don’t normally allow yourself; Purim is that special occasion to open the bottle you’ve been saving.
These mitzvot are all meant to help lift winter’s gloom, whether of meteorology or mood. That’s why costumes help – anything that gets you out of your Self helps. Be silly! For a change. Try your best to lighten up your perspective, as the sky lightens in early spring and lifts us up just a bit.
Forget Amalek, we are commanded this Shabbat, just for a bit. Forget all that which looms murderously over your joy of life. Make like the daffodils! which are already singing the praises of HaShem as the snow disappears, and spring is surely on the way.
Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. (Ex.25.2)
Life is so often about balancing contradictory opposites, or at least clashing inputs. Our parashah begins with such a moment. At first glance we seem to read a message that all of us are equally valued in equal ways – and this tugs at some deep place in us that longs for safety in the group and value for our contribution.
The second verse in the parashat hashavua is therefore a bit of a harsh surprise:
וְזֹאת֙ הַתְּרוּמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר תִּקְח֖וּ מֵאִתָּ֑ם
And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them (Ex. 25.3)
This seeming contradiction is a lesson we can only learn in a group: that heart and hands are two very different aspects of human being and interaction.
In community one sees this all the time: not every follower is a leader. It flies in the face of an ideal which seeks to value each of us equally. Or it seems to; but only a Procrustean equality insists that we are all the same. In the Talmud a midrash is preserved that describes one of the sins of the people of Sodom:
הויא להו פורייתא דהוו מגני עלה אורחין כי מאריך גייזי ליה כי גוץ מתחין ליה
They had beds on which they would lay their guests; when a guest was longer than the bed they would cut him, and when a guest was shorter than the bed they would stretch him. (BT Sanhedrin 109b)
Real equality, as any DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) expert will tell you, requires us to see each individual for who we are and what unique gift we bring. It’s a necessary exercise in noticing each other when we tend toward generalities just to bring the scale of our existence into a manageable embrace.
So while it may be a lovely gesture to welcome all contributions equally, such an approach actually erases our uniqueness. This is why the Torah imagines the holy mishkan which we are to build to be made of all our heartfelt gifts filtered through the actual reality of what is needed to create the structure, and who is best able to do each task.
There is room for us all; each task needs to be addressed. But first we have to come to know not only what our heart yearns for, but what our hands are capable of bringing. This is no time for participation trophies that overlook the precious differences that make us each who we are.
Some of us are leaders, some followers; some teach, some learn. Some have superior executive function, others can read a spreadsheet, and others can lead a dance. Betzalel is singled out by HaShem to lead the building; not you and not me. We can either sulk because we weren’t nominated, or applaud and support the talented person who was.
The mitzvah needs doing; how shall we do it best? Not by fighting over our place in line but by learning to balance our heart and our hands, our desires and our capacity. All of us is best at something, but we won’t learn that through envy of what others have or do.
I like to sing; our Gabbai;s voice is better. I enjoy working with our brit mitzvah candidates; our Brit Mitzvah coordinator’s talent is greater. I can’t read a spreadsheet; our Executive Director can even create them. My job is to figure out in what way my heart’s gift is best offered. That’s how we’ll get this mishkan, this holy place, sustainably and joyfully built.
Where do you get your inspiration from, when you’re confronted with a challenge? It might be social injustice, relationship upheaval, or just getting up in the morning – and we all need inspiration from outside our own capacity sometimes. Human beings aren’t perfect, and certainly we are not perfectly whole all by ourselves.
Consider Moshe at the beginning of our parashah. He has emerged as the unquestioned leader of the newly-formed group of refugees calling ourselves the Israelites. We are following a hope more than an articulated reality. As we should have expected, in no time at all there were many disagreements and much anger between individuals and groups of us.
And so our parashat hashavua begins with Moshe sitting and listening to argument after disagreement, expected to decide between each angry pair and rule justly.
It’s at this point that Yitro, Moshe’s father in law, shows up in the narrative; he’s a Midianite priest and, with his professional experience as a leader, sees that Moshe’s fledgling justice system is dysfunctional and bogged down. And so he offers advice:
Now listen to me. I will give you counsel, and God be with you (Ex. 18.19)
We can make jokes about free advice, especially from in-laws, but Moshe is both smart and humble, and he realizes that Yitro is right, and he takes his advice.
What’s the connection to the revelation at Sinai that’s about to happen? Possibly as simple as the court case backlog getting cleared out, so that no one had outstanding grievances distracting them from the opportunity to experience the presence of HaShem.
Or possibly it was Moshe’s public demonstration of the reality that truth can be found in any mouth, from any human, at any time. Perhaps it is that being able to hear a human voice is a prerequisite to hearing a divine voice. Especially when it comes from an unexpected place – or a place we’ve already ruled out.
And so the sages of the Babylonian Talmud were inspired to teach:
He [Talmudic sage Ben Azzai] used to say: do not despise anyone, and do not discriminate against anything, for there is no one that has not their hour, and there is no thing that has not its place. (Pirkei Avot 4.3)
On this Erev Shabbat when we are invited to hear the most important words of the Torah, the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Utterances of Sinai, it’s useful to remember the traditional Jewish teaching that we each hear according to our ability. May we do our best to remove our own prejudices about where we need to listen. May we hear what we need to hear to be inspired to achieve justice and peace in our own lives by seeking it for others.
But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage (Exodus 6.9)
Traditional Jewish teaching about the escape of our ancestor Israelites from Egypt maintains that it could not occur until we cried out and our cry reached HaShem. One might ask, wouldn’t HaShem already be aware of what’s going on? Isn’t a god supposed to be omniscient?
It’s not an either/or for Judaism. On some transcendent level, all is connected and everything intersects with everything else; small movements can echo through space and time in ways we cannot predict (this idea is called the Butterfly Effect in Chaos Theory). A midrash recounts how, although many people were doing terrible thing, it was the torture of one righteous young woman led to the complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In our own day we know how many young Black people are murdered by police; yet it was the murder of one person, George Floyd, in May of 2020 which led to an uprising against state injustice that swept the U.S.
The mystics of our people insist that this intimate interconnectedness exists everywhere and at all times; it is the condition of Being in the entire Universe (uni verse, not multi verse). But when Moshe, the reluctant prophet, is pushed by HaShem to go speak to the Israelites and let them know that HaShem has heard them, that their cries have caused (finally) the world to move, they cannot hear it.
Pharaoh had succeeded at this stage in making the people forget their dreams of freedom or at least improved conditions, by burdening them with additional hard labour. (Chizkuni, Exodus 6:9:1)
Remember back when the message that drove Western society was do more, produce more, and some of us boasted of our workaholism? Then came the pandemic, which demonstrated for us all that we and the planet could be healthier if we didn’t do so much all the time. But what happened? It’s as if Pharaoh doubled down, insisting that we produce at the same rate with less support. Come back to the office, ignore the pandemic’s effects, work harder with less job security. And to distract from this essential injustice, marginalized communities are singled out for torture: trans people, Black people, Jewish people, drag queens….until we are all so anguished that it’s all we can do to focus.
If one is in anguish his breath comes in short gasps and he cannot draw long breaths. (Rashi)
The Pharaoh of our days is that which drives us toward hopelessness and cynicism; it’s too hard to believe that our cries can make a difference against the might of today’s Egypt. It’s too hard not to feel overwhelmed. Some days we feel so constrained by stress that we can’t breathe deeply enough even to scream – much less sing of our hope.
Studying the sources for this parashah I found a curious proverb in connection with this verse about the people being unable to believe in words of a better future.
“There is no benefit to be derived from acacia wood except when it is cut down.” (Midrash Tanhuma VaEra 2.1)
The proverb is offered to explain that directly after Moshe’s mission fails, HaShem then sends Moshe to Pharaoh, indicating that there’s more, much more, to come: “an old proverb indicating that one must wait until an episode is concluded to learn the result.”
But the proverb might be understood another way. We who feel more like a lonely acacia tree in the wilderness, barren of the ability to produce fruit or even much shade, are not yet without potential – we may just not have discovered where our hope lies, yet. For some of us, it’s in some kind of sacrifice of ourselves that we will find purpose.
Is it in letting go of the idea that we’ll be “back to normal” in our lifetimes, and considering what a “new normal” might be?
Is in coming to the realization that our lives may be “over” in some way, but the children of our community may yet see a redemptive future?
An acacia tree cut down is no longer alive. And only then is acacia tree’s wood able to create the Ark to carry the most important hope of our people.
To recall the prophetic words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, we may not each get there, but if we are able to remain together and find a way to sing our hope, each one of us can aspire to the exalted fate of that acacia tree. Seemingly alone but yet so necessary to what is most important, each in our own, small way.
In parashat VaYehi we read of the death of Jacob, who according to our ancient tradition had at least 13 children (although there is a midrash that states that with each of the 12 songs, a twin sister was born!). The scene is classic: all the offspring gathered around the deathbed.
Many of us will have the opportunity to be at the deathbed of a beloved relative; grandparent, parent, sibling, friend, or, has v’halilah, an offspring. In these moments we feel the pull to be present, and in Jewish tradition it is important to reassure the soul that it will be okay although its lifelong envelope is expiring.
Often it seems that there is something we want to hear – or to say. But how?
It will come to each of us. Imagine the moment when those who love you gather around you as you are dying, looking for some meaningful word. In our parashah, the Torah relates the mixed blessing that ensued when the Patriarch Jacob summoned his children to his deathbed.
Gather yourselves together and I will tell you what will happen to you in the End of Days. Assemble yourselves and listen, o children of Jacob; listen to Israel your father. (Genesis 49.1-2)
Jacob did not know how to begin, but began anyway. In his opening words we can hear what he wanted to say. He wanted his children to stay together, to remain an “assembly” that listened to their parents and together carried on the meaning of their lives.
The dying man begins to speak, and his opening words are not pleasant, but they are honest. He gives voice in these moments to that which usually goes unspoken, too difficult to say. It’s not easy: at one point he cries out, “O G*d, I wait for your salvation!” (Genesis 49.18)
After his death, his son Joseph kisses him; in Hebrew kiss is neshek – and it is also armor, which leads us to ask. If there will be a moment of neshek, what will it mean in your life and your death?
The deathbed moment in Jewish tradition may occur long before the moment of death. It is a moment of recognizing, or avoiding, the relationships that matter. You choose the neshek: will your life end with armor, or a kiss? Will you and those around you shrink away from the risks of honesty and openness, and keep your emotional armor strong? Or will you manage to reach through the patterns, and the fear, toward the closeness of the kiss?
Jacob wished to bless his children, but was in doubt whether he ought to bless them since they had caused him so much pain… He turned his eyes and heart heavenwards, and cried out whatever G*d would put in his mouth to say. (Mei haShiloakh commentary on Bereshit Rabbah)
Those with the most unfinished business have the most difficult time with death. One waits all one’s life for someone to say I love you; one never does ask about a long-ago heartache, because it was too painful to bring up, and so the ache remains. There is hesitation on both sides, and why, anyway, expect the pattern of a lifetime to be overcome, just because death is near?
Jacob speaks to each of his children of the choices that have already defined the life of that child for good or for ill. There’s no guarantee that deathbed honesty will change someone’s life. But at the very least, Jacob’s gift to his children meant that they were not left to wonder, all their lives long, what dad might have said.
May this Shabbat be one on which you are able to contemplate Eternity and your precious place in it, and what your life means not only to you but to all those with whom you share meaningful community.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 