Shabbat Naso: How To Count

We are two parshas into the book BaMidbar, “in the wilderness,” called in English “Numbers” for the simple (and reasonable) reason that the first part of the book is focused upon counting. How many Israelites of fighting age who can help defend the camp in the wilderness? How many of the various families of the tribe of Levi who are tasked with the most important thing in camp, the sacred mishkan where we seek to experience the presence of the holy? and how many souls must be accounted for at the end of a move from one oasis to another, one well to another, one safe resting place to the next?

The idiom for “count people” in ancient Israelite Hebrew is naso et rosh, a lovely image that expresses so much: to count someone you must lift up their head, which leads to the visual of looking them in the eyes. An army may march on its stomach and a classroom needs one text per brain, but our ancestors are counting souls.

It’s a spiritual journey, acted out in actual footsteps, conversations, and caring for the sheep. It consists of births, deaths, joinings and quittings, distancings and returnings, getting lost and finding a way of teshuvah, return. And it should seem familiar (except maybe for the sheep part), because our spiritual community, like any Jewish kehillah, follows in its steps in more than one way. We are not sure where we are headed, or how long it will take to get there; we do have a vision, but we’ve had to accept that the details are not predictable. For those of us who are able to delight in or at least tolerate the uncertainty of real life lived with other people, it’s a haven, a support, and a challenge, all the time.

We can take two teachings with us from this parashat hashavua which are eminently portable, as Jewish lives, we have learned, must be:

  1. we are counted in terms of where we belong

נָשֹׂ֗א אֶת־רֹ֛אשׁ בְּנֵ֥י גֵרְשׁ֖וֹן גַּם־הֵ֑ם לְבֵ֥ית אֲבֹתָ֖ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָֽם

Take a census of the Gershonites also, by their ancestral house and by their clans. (Numbers 4.22)

Each of us belongs to an ancestry, to a bayit, “house”, and to a family. We who have been so indoctrinated in the concept of individualism may tend to the immature belief that we are in some way cut off, for better or for worse, from those around us, or from whence we come. But that is as illusory as the idea that we are uninfluenced in what we believe are our most personal moral convictions. As the Torah states here, you are counted in context, and by where you belong.

This is not, by the way, to say that you are trapped in any kind of socially mandated definitions of what these words mean: a bayit is a term that may originally simply refer to everyone who gets to eat when the family sits down for dinner in the tent. In modern Hebrew, anyone who can come and go in one’s dwelling is ben bayit, “a member of the family.”

2. we are blessed within our people

וְשָׂמ֥וּ אֶת־שְׁמִ֖י עַל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וַאֲנִ֖י אֲבָרְכֵֽם         

Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them. (Numbers 7.27)

There are, however, those of your ancestors, your relatives, and your people who you don’t feel close to – and of course, there are many you don’t know. You may even disagree deeply with one or another of their beliefs about how to be Jewish, how to fulfill a mitzvah, or even how to interact with Jews with whom you don’t agree. It’s worth considering that the Torah does not see us as angelic, nor even well-behaved, most of the time; refreshingly, it’s not a hagiography. Our ancestors aren’t saints. Neither, then, are we.

Yet blessing – whether you want to call it luck, happiness, good fortune, or a sense of peace and safety – does not come to you or me as individuals, having cut off our relationships with those we don’t like or don’t agree with. We are blessed as b’nei Yisrael, the people of Israel: those we love, those we don’t; those we agree with, those we don’t; all the good, the bad, and the astonishingly ugly, it is all part of what we all, as a people, bear together. 

Either we wrestle a blessing from it, as Jacob showed us how to do, or we fail. Not for nothing is the river besides which he fights that night battle with (himself? an angel?) called Yavok, “struggle.” We can disagree, we can struggle, we can stalk off in a fury; but in every direction all around us is wilderness. Yes, you count; you count as one of us. An imperfect, often erring, usually confused, interconnected people. 

You, I: none of us can do this alone. Together, even with those we don’t like, we all make whatever spiritual journey is beneath our feet to carry out.

Shabbat BaMidbar: Into the Wilderness

Necessary Chaos

In the wilderness your possessions cannot surround you. Your preconceptions cannot protect you. Your logic cannot promise you the future. Your guilt can no longer place you safely in the past. You are left alone each day with an immediacy that astonishes, chastens, and exults. You see the world as if for the first time. – Lawrence Kushner, Honey From the Rock

This week we begin the book BaMidbar, “in the wilderness” – a name coincidentally far more descriptive of the contents of the book than that of the one we just finished reading. With this week’s parashah, we are leaving the shadow of Mt. Sinai and heading into untracked territory, in order to pursue our dream of home.

Anyone who has immersed in Torah study knows that this is the condition in which we will spend the rest of the narrative, not only of BaMidbar but of the following book, Devarim, as well. This is no temporary condition but a forty-year reality – more than that, it is lifelong, since “forty” is used in ancient Israel to mean “a lot” more than an actual number.

That is how our lives feel now, no? We may not be experiencing a geographic wilderness, but the word bamidbar, read without the vowels that were added later in any case, can also be understood to mean in the words or in the speaking. Truly, we wander in a wilderness of words (and images): social media, word of mouth, and so many news outlets. 

It’s no consolation to consider the possibility that this may be a lifelong condition for us, from now on. What may be some consolation is to note that, as we will celebrate on Shavuot, this coming Sunday night June 1 and Monday morning June 2, is that it is in the wilderness, unsettled and frightening as it is, that we receive Torah. Mt. Sinai is not in the land of Israel; it is somewhere, on a peak unidentified until this day, that we had our most profound experience of Eternity.

Our reading for Shavuot is the Aseret haDibrot, the Ten Utterances. They begin with the naming of the holiness the Israelites are meeting: 

אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֑֔-ךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֣֥ית עֲבָדִ֑͏ֽים

I ‘ה am your G!d who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage (Ex.20.2)

When Moshe first meets this holiness, this rupture in normality, he asks further, but what is Your Name? The answer is in itself a form of wilderness:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִ-ם֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה וַיֹּ֗אמֶר כֹּ֤ה תֹאמַר֙ לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה שְׁלָחַ֥נִי אֲלֵיכֶֽם

G!d said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh: thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3.14)

Ehyeh is not easily defined; it may mean “that which will be” or it may mean “that which is,” which is why one good expression of HaShem’s Name is Eternity. This name of HaShem which we meet in the wilderness is not static, nor defined; it is in process of becoming, without a foothold in the past known or in the future unknown. So is our experience with HaShem, as Rabbi Lawrence Kushner suggests in his Honey From the Rock: 

The wilderness is not just a desert through which we wandered for forty years. It is a way of being. A place that demands being open to the flow of life around you. A place that demands being honest with yourself without regard to the cost in personal anxiety; a place that demands being present with all of yourself….

Now you might say that the promise of such spirited awareness could only keep one with the greatest determination in the wilderness but for a moment or so. That such a way of being would be like breathing pure oxygen. We would live our lives in but a few hours and die of old age. As our ancestors complained, “it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14.12).  And indeed, that is your choice.

We might call it the “necessary chaos” which, just like in Genesis, is the precondition for creation. Whatever comes next, for you and for me and for us, cannot be summoned from pre-existing settled definitions and realities, but only from the chaos that ensues when all we thought we knew is challenged.

It’s not comfortable and it’s not sustainable, which is why we are given Shabbat, for rest,  and each other, for reassurance. Torah teaches us that these are the two necessary conditions for surviving the wilderness of words and of geography. We need each other, because this is too much for any one person to cope with. And we need times of rest, like Shabbat and Shavuot, to enter a different mode of living, where we remember what it is  like to be in the Presence of Eternity, and review the lessons for living in adversity that we learn in those moments.

Shabbat BeHar-BeHukotai: This is Exhausting

so much suffering everywhere you look

וְלֹ֤א תוֹנוּ֙ אִ֣ישׁ אֶת־עֲמִית֔וֹ וְיָרֵ֖אתָ מֵֽאֱלֹהֶ֑-ךָ כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י ה’ אֱלֹהֵ-כֶֽם

Do not wrong one another, but fear Eternity. (Lev. 25.17) 

Do not read עמיתו but אמיתו , not “your neighbor” but “your truth”. Do not wrong your truth. – D’vash HaSadeh 

Friends, this is hard. Every week brings fresh horror. This week the malignity that occupies the Federal government advanced its assault on the most vulnerable among us – literally, widows and orphans – as well as our trans family members. We watch helplessly as the equally malign far-right ministers of the Israeli government speaks of their aim to “destroy, ethnically cleanse, starve and expel the inhabitants of Gaza”, and the prime minister allows it because his political survival depends upon their support. And we, U.S. Jews caught in a particulary difficult cross-fire, find ourselves in danger not only from the hostile right, but also from the left. 

Perhaps most difficult of all is the way in which competing narratives of what happened and who and what to blame assault the simple truth of it. The tragedy of the murder of two young people leaving an event hosted by an American Jewish organization at an American Jewish museum is no more or less insupportable than any other death associated with the Israel-Palestine conflict; so many innocent young Gazans and Israelis have similarly been murdered. The two who were killed by a person yelling “for Gaza” were employed by the Israel Embassy (which may have been coincidental). Nothing about it is logical: she was Jewish, he was Christian; she was American, he was Israeli; the gathering they had just attended was to focus on ways to help Gaza. The person who killed them knew nothing about them; this is the result, rather, a particularly toxic meeting of antisemism (people coming out of a Jewish museum were targeted) and leftist U.S. ignorance.

By any measure of good and evil, this is madness. This frees no one and does no good. This is what it has been for some time on all sides: indiscriminate killing. It should be no suprise that such horrors are not contained by national borders, nor by policies, nor by security apparatus. Nor should any of it be a surprise for any of us who studies Torah and takes it to heart. This week’s parashah is one more reminder of how far we are from where we need to be as human beings who are Jews (and those who love them).

Our parashah is, if anything, a refreshing reminder of the goodness we are, also, capable of as a species: the economic justice mitzvot conveyed in parashat BeHar are so essential to what it means to be a Jew that these were the first laws that a potential convert to Judaism had to know. To share what we have, to care for the dignity of those who have less, and to remember to be humble if we are in the privileged position of having enough to share; these are the characteristics that are meant to mark the practice of Jewish economic justice.

It’s terribly painful to be reminded of how far we are from where we should be. But it’s the truth, and we are the people who understands the difficult necessity of facing truth, if we would grow toward integrity. Simply: it’s not going to be pretty – but there will be moments of great beauty. The Jewish path toward that integrity, that sense of wholeness that will hold us even when all around us is chaos, is summed up in Torah study:

1. Don’t try this alone We study Torah, looking for light and inspiration and some hint of truth, in community. We are incapable of understanding it without being in conversation with the past, present, and future of our people.

2. There are no easy answers Torah study is not about finding an answer that can be applied, like a band-aid, to every problem we’re ever going to have. It’s about learning an approach and how to apply it in every situation.

3. It will not make it “all right” but it will make it bearable.

4. This takes time The quest to understand one’s life and to find meaning in it is a life-long effort. But don’t worry, you’ll develop rich friendships along the way.

Let go of the idea of the individual self who can go it alone. Not only is it egocentric, it’s also impossible to carry the weight of the world in one’s heart. Bring it all with you, into the midst of your community, and we’ll face it together, in love and support, no matter what happens next, as long as we live.

Shabbat Emor: “Say” what?

today is Lag ba’Omer, the 33rd day of the counting of the ‘Omer: הוד שבהוד hod sheh-b’hod, gratitude in gratitude

Today is the minor Jewish holy day known simply as lag ba’omer, a name which is nothing but the way to vocalize today’s Jewish date: the 33rd day of the counting of the ‘Omer; ל is not only a letter but also the number 30 for us, and ג, being the third letter of the alef-bet, denotes three. (If you’d like to understand more, go here.) So: today is the 33rd day of the ‘omer count; in the spiritual process we’ve attached to this ancient ritual, through which we are invited to consider the different aspects of our being and how they interact, today is a day when we are to consider hod, doubled: how gratitude understands/reacts to/is influenced by  gratitude.

Endless gratitude? Gratitude for the existence of gratitude? The term הוד hod in Hebrew appears often in Torah and Tefilah: hod v’hadar, “glory and beauty” or “gratitude for/with/in beauty” is a common phrase in the Psalms and wherever the ancient words speak of the wonder of life itself and its Source. It’s a powerful thing: we seek a silver lining no matter how bad things are, and try to stay mindful of the full scale of human suffering, lest we lost sight of our real place in HaShem’s impossibly beautiful and awful world.

In times of distress we seek reliable grounding, in times of “fake news” we wonder what information to trust, and how to judge. We might be endlessly grateful for the Jewish tradition that offers us context (we’ve seen this before), grounding (we know what ethics are and what they are NOT), and a tool box (kindness outranks anything else). At the same time, we have learned that the past is not an answer to the future, but only a source of information about what might be in the offing, and a way to discern a path forward through it.

Our parashat hashavua, the week’s assigned Torah reading, this week is Emor, which means “say”. We might retort, “how in the world are we supposed to know what to say?”But hold the thought, and let’s see how our study might respond to it. In the Triennial Cycle, we land on a review of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, along with Sukkot, reminding us that we are moving within a developed spiritual system; we’re not alone. Next we note the content of the haftarah, which is overtly political: the Zadokite priestly family is in the process of achieving High Priest status in place of the earlier Aaronide priesthood (Ezekiel and Zekharyah are dripping with this). Checking now on the “alternate” haftarah offered in the Triennial Cycle, we are presented with something that seems quite different. 

ט֣וֹב ה’ לְמָע֖וֹז בְּי֣וֹם צָרָ֑ה וְיֹדֵ֖עַ חֹ֥סֵי בֽוֹ

HaShem is good to [those who have hope], and is a haven on a day of distress, being mindful of those seeking refuge. (Nahum1.7)

In just so many words, we are to act toward refugees with hope – in them and in us.

The way we seek among all these sources (ancient, and also the centuries of commentary like Rashi, or Aviva Zornberg) and we consider them all together, is like the way in which we consider the different aspects of the world, and ourselves, during the ‘omer counting period. One counts each day, and is mindful each day for whatever time we can muster. Occasionally, something learned enters the heart and soothes it – not necessarily with reassurance, but perhaps with a greater quality: clarity.

The texts brought together remind us of the complexity of life at any given moment; there are structures within which we walk, there are the politics of greed as well as communal well-being; and then there is the simple truth that, as Isaiah puts it

 צִיּ֖וֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּ֣ט תִּפָּדֶ֑ה וְשָׁבֶ֖יהָ בִּצְדָקָֽה

 Zion will be saved by righteousness, those who repent in justice (Isaiah 1.27) 

Having just come from a week in Israel and one in Palestine, I couldn’t agree more with the prophet.

In both places we are beset with voices raised in fear, anger and hatred, one against the other; in the U.S. where we live, and Israel, where the Jewish communal identity we are sustained by emerged. People in positions of power say that the common good is one which causes violence, hatred and suffering. 

But there is another voice that we can clearly hear when we uxtapose our sources: seasons will continue to cycle, and people in and out of power will continue to disappoint, and the bottom line has always been clear: HaShem dwells in kindness.

I invite you to watch the hour long recording of the joint Palestinian-Israeli Nakba Day commemoration that took place yesterday, May 15, and was broadcast internationally by the astonishing and courageous organization Combatants for Peace. They know what to say. Let the people who are actually there, on the ground, experiencing the harsh reality of war every day, reassure you: even as there is an endless capacity for gratitude in the world, so is there an abundance of that which we struggle for even more: the sense that there is enough love, enough mercy, and enough acceptance, for us all, as we are, without having to sacrifice any aspect of what makes us individually precious and communally irreplaceable. 

Our tradition tells us clearly what to say. Without justice there will be no peace; without peace there will be no thriving “between the river and the sea”. The voice calling for life, dignity and equality for all between the river and the sea right now, the one in danger of being overwhelmed at every moment, is nothing more or less than the spark of HaShem surrounded by the destruction all around it. 

Hating those who hate you is easy enough, but it is not from hate that one cultivates love. Perhaps on this day, at least, when the whole universe, Jewishly speaking, is pointing us toward gratitude, we might give it enough space in our hearts to nourish that tiny spark as it is reflected in what hope we are able to maintain, despite it all. Say: kindness is real. Love is strong. Hope endures.

Shabbat Akharei Mot-Kedoshim: “after death, holiness.”

Regardless of what I might want to write about on this Shabbat, like any Torah commentator I am guided, bidden and challenged by the parashat hashavua, the assigned parashah of the week. This week it is a double parashah: Akharei Mot and Kedoshim, “after death” and “holiness.” This is a not-unusual pairing, but it seems that each time it comes around, there is a new way to interpret these two concepts and how they are juxtaposed.

Akharei Mot refers to the death of two young men who were just starting out on their life journey. They had just been consecrated to the newly created priesthood of HaShem. On their first day, something went wrong, and all their good intentions and dedication, surrounded by all the support and love of the community, could not protect them from death. Death: the end of all hopes, all dedication, all vision of the future.

The tradition of Jewish commentary on the parashat hashavua, the week’s reading, is predicated upon the idea of conversation with those who have recorded their interpretations before me. We often begin with Rashi, that singular and greatest of commentators of all; and from his questions and insights we continue with two thousand years of those others who have brought to bear grammar, philosophy, midrash and mysticism upon the text of the Torah, the better to understand its relevance to us.

Nor is the current moment to be ignored. As I fly from the State of Israel toward the U.S. in these moments of reflection, I can’t help but notice the eternally unchanging presence of the fluffy white clouds above Greece, and then the European mainland. What a contrast to the fleeting nature of our lives! All our strivings and all our stresses, they pass, and the clouds and the wind and the sea and the sky remain.

Sad news of more confirmations of hostage deaths has come to us this week, and, perhaps even more tragic, the news that the Netanyahu government has assigned the rescue of remaining hostages the lowest priority in the ongoing war against Hamas. It is a nightmare to watch a video released by Hamas of human beings who have become aware that their lives are considered expendable by the community that they thought would do everything for them, even as they would do everything for it.

Faced as we are by so much death, of Israelis and of Palestinians who are also innocent victims of people with the power of the weaponry of death in their hands, we would be well justified in asking what is akharei mot about it, what is “after death”? When will we see the end of the murder of innocents barely started on the journey of life, whether young adults inducted into the Israeli army or young Gazans dying right now of famine induced by powers beyond their control, and not at all inevitable?

Our ancestors sought answers not in stars and constellations, and not in sweeping generalities, but in tiny details of the moment, and one such is this juxtaposition of the two parshiyot of our week. “After death” is followed by “holiness.” Not even a comma interposes; what might further investigation of the small details reveal? 

“Holiness” in our Jewish tradition is not piousness, nor it is righteousness (that is a much later Christian overlay of meaning); rather, the Hebrew root ק ד ש is a technical term, which means “set aside for a specific purpose.” As my flight moves out of range of Houthi death-seeking missiles, I too am offered a chance to consider what it means to die, and what it means to live another day. Our tradition urges us to consider that what it means – to die, and to live – might be focused upon purpose. And that the best and highest purpose of a life, lived with conviction and with dedication, is what it means to live a life which is holy. In terms of Jewish thology, this idea summons us toward the vision of a life clarified and focused, clean of boredom and self-absorption.  

“After death, holiness.” In this past two weeks I have been privileged to share the lives of Israeli and Palestinian human beings clinging to their holiness in the face of so much death, so much sadness, so much despair. I have witnessed the courage of those who, in the immortal wistful words of Rodney King, just want to “get along” with each other and with their lives. In the everyday moments of their lives they are demonstrating for us, we  who, for now at least, live further away from the furnace of immanent Eternity.

Death is not the end of love. Those who cause death do not erase the fact that life is beautiful and worthwhile. Contrary to the capitalist saying, those with the gold do not make the rules; the rules of life belong to Eternity. And those rules declare that love is a power as strong as any.

שִׂימֵ֨נִי כַֽחוֹתָ֜ם עַל־לִבֶּ֗ךָ כַּֽחוֹתָם֙ עַל־זְרוֹעֶ֔ךָ כִּֽי־עַזָּ֤ה כַמָּ֙וֶת֙ אַהֲבָ֔ה

Let me be a seal upon your heart, like the seal upon your hand, for love is fierce as death. (Proverbs 8.6)

It’s not easy to remain committed to the single and singular purpose of love in the midst of despair, nor perhaps even to believe in it. This is what it means to be holy; it’s not a passive experience, but an active and committed attitude. It’s the Jewish people at our best, stiff-necked and stubborn enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other along our ancient and unending path: וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ  love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19.18), interpreted by Rabbi Hillel as אמר לו: דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד – that which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor (BT Shabbat 31a). Holiness is not an adjective, but an active verb – not a state of being, but a choice made over and over again.

 As those with weapons of death continue to use them in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe and in Africa, and everywhere else that isn’t included in the news feed of the moment, may we find in the doubling of this week’s parashah an encouraging hint of what our response might be: “after death” as in after life, after sadness as in after joy”: “holiness.” 

Shabbat Tazria-Metzora: Seems To Me

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

Our ancestors dealt with forces beyond their control just as we do; in this week’s parashah, which joins together the parshiyot called Tazria and Metzora, what we read according to the third year of the Triennial Cycle for Torah begins with some kind of moldy growth detected upon the walls of one’s home.

Some kinds of discoloration on a wall are harmless, but some are indications of growths that can destroy the house, or at least its resale value. In ancient Israel the comparable problem was in ascertaining whether the growth would render the house tame’, or ritually impure, or not. And so we find in chapter 14:

וּבָא֙ אֲשֶׁר־ל֣וֹ הַבַּ֔יִת וְהִגִּ֥יד לַכֹּהֵ֖ן לֵאמֹ֑ר כְּנֶ֕גַע נִרְאָ֥ה לִ֖י בַּבָּֽיִת

the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.” (Lev. 14.35)

Two aspects of the narrative are striking. The first is that the person who has observed the growth is not allowed to judge what it is. They are merely to say nir’ah li, “it seems to me” that it is “something like a plague”. This is interesting, even provocative. It is on your house; you have observed it; yet you are not allowed in any way to define what is happening.

The second rather surprising aspect of this story is that the first thing that the priest does is to minimize the possible damage:

וְצִוָּ֨ה הַכֹּהֵ֜ן וּפִנּ֣וּ אֶת־הַבַּ֗יִת בְּטֶ֨רֶם יָבֹ֤א הַכֹּהֵן֙ לִרְא֣וֹת אֶת־הַנֶּ֔גַע וְלֹ֥א יִטְמָ֖א כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּבָּ֑יִת וְאַ֥חַר כֵּ֛ן יָבֹ֥א הַכֹּהֵ֖ן לִרְא֥וֹת אֶת־הַבָּֽיִת׃ 

The priest shall order the house cleared before the priest enters to examine the plague, so that nothing in the house may become unclean; after that the priest shall enter to examine the house.  (Lev. 14.36)

Whatever is in the house when the priest enters to examine the growth is included in whatever diagnosis is reached, but whatever is taken out in advance is spared. This is a clear indication that nothing has a status until it is proclaimed. Not unlike the very act of creation, when according to midrash the first human was invited to name the creatures in order to bring them fully into existence, here also reality must be named before it can be recognized, and before it has influence.

What is compelling here, in terms of human behavior, is not so much that we are summoned to name our reality. That is considered an act of valor: “call it what it is” is a kind of honesty. What is more interesting here is that we are not meant to name our reality by ourselves. We are not to reach a conclusion without checking in with someone else. In ancient Israel, it was the local priest. With us, it might mean an appointment with a therapist, or a rabbi, or a reliable, impartial frend.

In these complicated and frightening days, we are flooded with declarations of what is: the world is ending, or it is being saved. We who have been taught to trust our gut, to go with our own insights, may be having a hard time deciding, all by ourselves, the fate of the world. We could do worse than to remember to say nir’ah li, “it seems to me”, and to consult, and to seek insight, beyond our own understanding.

In this week in which the Jewish world has lived through another Yom HaShoah in which we remember the horrors of the Holocaust, and not long afterward Yom HaZikaron (remembrance day) and Yom HaAtzma’ut (Israel independence day), we would do well to refrain from quick and individual judgement. Say nir’ah li, “it seems to me,” and consult beyond yourself; be not so quick to judge or to be sure, whether you consider disaster or redemption more likely to be in the offing.

From mourning those lost to violence, to making the effort to reach out a hand of support and connection to those who share our home with us, to simply remembering to be in awe of human resilience and compassion in the worst of times, these are intense days for all of us who feel with the medieval poet Yehudah HaLevi “my heart is in the East, and I am in the uttermost West.” May Shabbat bring a sense of the longed-for sukkah of peace and may we feel it spread over us.

Shabbat Shemini: They Must Deserve It

There but for the grace of HaShem

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹ֗ן הוּא֩ אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֨ר ה’ ׀ לֵאמֹר֙ בִּקְרֹבַ֣י אֶקָּדֵ֔שׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵ֥י כׇל־הָעָ֖ם אֶכָּבֵ֑ד וַיִּדֹּ֖ם אַהֲרֹֽן׃ 

Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what ‘ה meant by saying: through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and will be respected before all the people.” Aaron was silent. (Lev. 10.3)

On this Shabbat we read of the tragic deaths of Nadav and Abihu, two young men on their first day working in the newly-established priesthood serving HaShem on behalf of the Israelites. We understand very little of the Torah’s account as it is preserved, and what we do have is so troubling that trying to understand it has been the aspiration of many a midrash.

Most of the interpretations given to this passage assume that the punishment fits the crime. Using the tools at their disposal to try to explain, the rabbis note the juxtaposition of a rule that requires priests not to drink alcohol on the job and deduce that Nadav and Abihu must have been drunk, and so were punished. Another midrash interprets through the Torah’s description of their bringing of “strange fire that had not been commanded” that the two of them were disrespectful of the established ways and were impatient to take over and innovate. 

What many interpretations share is the desire to justify their treatment; they must have deserved it. The ways of HaShem, they seem to feel, must not only be just, they must be always justifiable. This way of thinking is ultimately nothing other than self-interest. If I can see the logic in what happened to them, I can avoid it, and thus be safe; and from our natural interest in self-preservation it is only a short step to dehumanization of the other, who is not me. If it is happening to them and I am not them, then I am safe from what happened to them. 

If there is no logic to this thinking, then uncertainty, and anxiety, must ensue. The ultimate impact of the escape from uncertainty is cruelty. And so HaShem is seen as arbitrarily cruel, when it is our own assessment that leads to that conclusion.

This seemingly innocent tool of thinking is not morally neutral. Proceeding from the assumption that events have reasons can and does lead us to a place of moral judgement. It is  only the belief that events may be mysterious that leaves room for kindness. It is only when we can face our anxiety free of the burden to find meaning for it that we can make room, strangely enough within the anxiety and the uncertainty, for empathy and kindness.

In Tomer Devorah the great scholar Moshe Cordovero offers us an ethical practice greater than discerning how another person deserves what has happened to them: when we  remember that we are created in the divine Image, and that we are capable of not only expressing all the divine characteristics of being, we can come to see that what we act out is what exists in the world. 

כְּפִי מַה שֶּׁיִּתְנַהֵג כָּךְ מַשְׁפִּיעַ מִלְמַעְלָה וְגוֹרֵם שֶׁאוֹתָהּ הַמִּדָּה תָּאִיר בָּעוֹלָם

As a person acts below, so [too] will one merit to open for oneself the highest trait above – exactly as one acts, so will there be a flow from above. And one will cause that trait to shine in the world. (Moshe Cordovero, Tomer Devorah, 1.14)

The trait Cordovero names as being the highest expression of the divine in the world? it is not justice, nor certainty, nor even peace – it is mercy. HaShem’s most holy presence in the world is adumbrated by kindness. 

We don’t know why Nadav and Abihu died. We don’t know why the person living in a tent down the street lost everything. And we do not know why suffering comes to us in unequal measures in this world. All we know is that our ancient and well-traveled Jewish tradition asserts that the answer to our sadness and our fear is not to be found in logic, but in love.

Shabbat Pesakh 5785: Uncertainty

What if this Pesakh

We recall precarity

Versus redemption?

– Jen Van Meter

This year Shabbat occurs on the seventh day of Pesakh. The Torah story assigned to this day recalls the most uncertain time of all in the course of our ancestors’ redemption. First, HaShem leads us on a deliberately circuitous route to avoid contact with any other human encampments; second, HaShem then leads us in a reverse course, in order to lure Pharaoh into what will ultimately be a fatal pursuit. Finally, exactly that happens, and we find ourselves trapped between the Sea of Reeds on one side and the approaching Egyptian army on the other – the Jewish version of being caught between Scylla and Charybdis. 

Uncertainty just at the outset of carefully devised plan has a murderous impact on morale. There is something about the first steps of carrying out a plan that is so tentative, as we wonder whether we’ve worked it out correctly, whether our assumptions will prove true, and whether we can trust each other in the process. So when it all seems to go wrong, our ancestors are quick to conclude the worst; their words to Moshe have always seemed to me to be the first demonstrable example of sarcasm in our ancient literature:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ֮ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֒ הֲֽמִבְּלִ֤י אֵין־קְבָרִים֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם לְקַחְתָּ֖נוּ לָמ֣וּת בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר מַה־זֹּאת֙ עָשִׂ֣יתָ לָּ֔נוּ לְהוֹצִיאָ֖נוּ מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃ 

And they said to Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?” (Ex. 14.11)

Human nature hasn’t changed much since then; we are still quick to assume that all is lost when things seem to go wrong, and often act with great alacrity to blame someone else for it. And very few of us are comfortable in moments of uncertainty. A lot of bad theology emerges from the human desire to believe something certain rather than accept mystery at the heart of life.

There is, however, another choice, midway between assuming failure and accepting mystery, and that is to balance them both in an awareness of time. HaShem is an expression of all Place and all Time, and you and I are each one individual nexus within that reality. As long as we live, we move with HaShem, at each moment of our lives occupying exactly one position in which time and space converge in us, and every moment, by the nature of time and space, we are also moving from one position to another. We are not static. Every moment brings the possibility of a new awareness, a change in circumstance, a different perspective. 

It took the Israelites forty years to learn that a spiritual path takes time – indeed, it takes a lifetime. The path we as a kehillah kedoshah, a holy community, follow together will always be part mystery, part uncertainty, and part assumption that will be proved wrong as often as not.

When we face uncertainty, if we have enough willingness to show each other Hesed, grace, we will emerge better than when we started, as we move, each of us and all of us together, in the Eternal circles of our shared and our solitary existence.

Pre Pesakh Primer: All Things Hametz

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אָנוּ אוֹכְלִין חָמֵץ וּמַצָּה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה כֻלּוֹ מַצָּה.

On all other nights we eat hametz and matzah, tonight only matzah. (Mishnah Pesakhim 10.4) 

Happy new year! The Jewish month of Nissan began on Saturday evening, and with it, the calendar year of our people.

The first of three harvest festivals is only two weeks away. The observance of Pesakh, also called Passover, obliges us to live differently (even as our other new year in the fall is marked by Yom Kippur, a day on which we live differently from the norm). Each year, throughout the Jewish world, the old is discarded or recycled, and the new is celebrated.

Pesakh begins at sundown on 14 Nissan, which is Saturday evening, the close of Shabbat, April 12 2025. 

Here is a review of the most important aspects of our celebration:

Before Saturday evening April 12, all hametz is removed from the possession of any Jewish person. What you are unable to eat or give away should be packaged safely and put away in a designated area. Make a list of all that you have hidden away and sell it for the duration of the festival of matzah. You can do that using a handy on line form provided by our friends at Chabad here: Hametz Sale On Line

This year, the timing is the tricky part. Pesakh begins at the close of Shabbat this year. That means that we have to clean for Pesakh before Shabbat. Therefore: from Friday April at noon until Sunday evening April 20 at sundown, all Jews should have no leavening in their possession, except what you are planning to eat on Shabbat. The cleaning takes place before that, and should be done by Friday before Shabbat begins.

You should do the ritual blessing of bedikat hametz and bi’er hametz (looking for and getting rid of your hametz) on Friday afternoon. You can find the ritual in the first pages of many haggadot, or click HERE.

After you clean, your hallah or whatever other hametz foodstuff which you are having for Shabbat before Pesakh begins should be kept in one designated area of your living area; everything else should be cleaned of any hametz by then.

What is hametz? The Torah is specific:

שִׁבְעַ֤ת יָמִים֙ מַצּ֣וֹת תֹּאכֵ֔לוּ אַ֚ךְ בַּיּ֣וֹם הָרִאשׁ֔וֹן תַּשְׁבִּ֥יתוּ שְּׂאֹ֖ר מִבָּתֵּיכֶ֑ם כִּ֣י ׀ כׇּל־אֹכֵ֣ל חָמֵ֗ץ וְנִכְרְתָ֞ה הַנֶּ֤פֶשׁ הַהִוא֙ מִיִּשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מִיּ֥וֹם הָרִאשֹׁ֖ן עַד־י֥וֹם הַשְּׁבִעִֽי׃ 

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the very first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day to the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. (Exodus 12.16) 

Please note that outside of Israel Passover is observed for eight days, not seven.

But the Torah is not specific enough: what is leaven? The rabbis of the Talmud spell it out. We are to clear our homes of all the five types of grain that our ancestors used as food, and to make matzah from any of the five from the new harvest (unleavened because it is new, and there is no time for the dough to rise!) for the celebration:

These are the types of grain with which a person fulfills his obligation to eat matzah on the first night of Passover: With wheat, with barley, with spelt, with rye, and with oats. (Mishnah Pesakhim 2.5)

Because of our concern to fully rid ourselves of all products containing these five grains, many more foodstuffs have been added to the list of what is considered hametz. 

what is forbidden and what is permitted:

  1. Whisky, beer, and other alcohols made from grains is forbidden
  2. Soy sauce and other condiments with wheat added are forbidden
  3. Yeast itself, as well as baking power and baking soda (although these are not hametz, they are too much like it) is avoided
  4. Rice, corn, beans and legumes are not consumed by Ashkenazi Jews, for no clear reason other than they 1. Look like flour, 2. Can be used to make bread, and/or 3. Swell when cooked (like when bread rises)
  5. Sefardi Jews eat rice, corn, beans and legumes; many Ashkenazi authorities also recommend that Jews not abstain from these foods, but old traditions are still very strong in many places, and each family should follow their own familiar minhag.
  6. Gluten free matzah is permitted, but it does not fulfill the halakhic obligation during the Seder to consume a single bite of matzah made of one of the five classic grains: wheat, barley, spelt, rye, oats.

Where possible, different plates and cooking utensils are utilized. Items like pots and pans and cookie sheets can be run through a dishwasher or put in an oven set to its highest heat to kasher them. The oven itself should be kashered in the same way; countertops can be cleaned with boiling water, and some people cover them with aluminum foil. A toaster cannot be kashered for Pesakh, but a toaster oven can be if necessary.

You do not have to eat matzah all week; the halakhic obligation is to eat an olive’s worth during the seder (about a bite, not even a mouthful).

If you are so completely gluten intolerant that eating one bite of such matzah would endanger your life or your well-being, you may not do so. 

Spiritually, regardless of your regular dietary restrictions, it is important that this week be treated differently in terms of the way you eat. Matzah is so central to the holy day that it is literally called hag haMatzot, the Festival of Matzot. Since eating is life, and all life depends upon the harvest, this eight day festival of gratitude depends on our mindfulness of all we are taking into our bodies as sustenance.

רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל הָיָה אוֹמֵר, כָּל שֶׁלֹּא אָמַר שְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים אֵלּוּ בְּפֶסַח, לֹא יָצָא יְדֵי חוֹבָתוֹ, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן, פֶּסַח, מַצָּה, וּמָרוֹר

Rabban Gamliel always said: Whoever does not speak of these three things on Pesakh has not fulfilled the obligation: Pesakh, matzah, and maror. (Mishnah Pesakhim 10.5)

Shabbat Pekudey/HaHodesh: once more, with kavvanah!

וַיַּ֨רְא מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶת־כׇּל־הַמְּלָאכָ֗ה וְהִנֵּה֙ עָשׂ֣וּ אֹתָ֔הּ כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר צִוָּ֥ה יְהֹוָ֖ה כֵּ֣ן עָשׂ֑וּ וַיְבָ֥רֶךְ אֹתָ֖ם מֹשֶֽׁה

When Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks—as the LORD had commanded, so they had done—Moses blessed them. (Ex. 39.43)

One of the fascinating aspects of Torah study is how archaeological discoveries often offer  adjustments to what we think we know, as they inform and disrupt our learning. Midrash and speculation are endlessly rich and exciting, but there’s nothing like actual concrete (more likely, rock) evidence of ancient religious practice and spiritual belief.

On this Shabbat Pekudei, named for the Torah reading of the week, we reach the last parashah of the book of Exodus as well as the last of the retellings of the building of the mishkan. By dint of the calendar this is also Shabbat HaHodesh, literally “the Shabbat of The Month.” By this is meant the first month of the Jewish year, the month of Nisan; on this Shabbat we announce that the month of Pesakh is beginning.

Our ancestors celebrated Pesakh by traveling to Jerusalem in what is called in English “pilgrimage.” In Hebrew the festival is referred to as a hag, a word related to the ritual of walking around the altar in procession – this procession was apparently a high point of all three of our harvest festivals, Pesakh, Shavuot and Sukkot. (If you’d like to see the closest relative to that ritual extant today, you have to go to the live cameras trained on the ka’aba in Mecca). 

It’s interesting to learn that according to the archaeological evidence, already a long time ago our ancestors were developing a ritual for those who could not make the trip. We can zoom in, or visit a live cam, and their equivalent is possibly that which is pictured in the photo above. 

The Magdala Stone is, as near as we can tell from how it is carved and where it was found, meant to provide a sense of being connected to the Jerusalem Temple when one was forced to remain at a distance. The stone itself is carved with all kinds of references to the central Shrine: the top may be meant to show the bread put out each week, and the Temple pillars are carved on the sides.

Look closer, and one sees something depicted inside the Temple, behind and partially obscured by the pillars: possibly, maybe, it could be the wheels of the merkavah, the chariot described by Ezekiel in the opening vision of his book – a chariot upon which HaShem was conveyed.

Pekudei is about so many myriad details that go into constructing the mishkan; Shabbat HaHodesh is likewise a reminder of the many details of preparing for Pesakh and the Seders we will celebrate together, G!d wiling. One might catch oneself in recoil from even more details that add to the overwhelm of our days. The Magdala Stone can serve us as a tangible reminder: all of life is a myriad of details, and the to-do lists will never be done.  All those details, done well and carried out with kavvanah, intention, become a construction within which we will find the Presence of holiness. More: we will not find it otherwise.

Once more, then, beloveds, with kavvanah: into the details of the mishkan: the moments and the mitzvot of our lives.