Shabbat Sh’lakh-L’kha: When the Safe Choice is a Dead End

This week in our parashah it all goes wrong, suddenly. Moses sends twelve scouts, each of them a leader of a tribe, to survey the land just ahead, the Land to which G*d promised to lead them. We are literally there already – until the Promised Land abruptly becomes a place to far to reach in one lifetime, it’s really not a long distance. The Israelites were standing on the threshold of the promise geographically, yet they discovered that they were not, spiritually, anywhere close.

What went wrong? The scouts return with two reports. Ten of these leaders of the people tell stories of large, fortified cities guarded by foreign giants; the Israelites seem justified in being shocked, and frightened. They paint a lurid picture of the dangers that lurk so close by. And all the while, two scouts keep on insisting that yes, it did seem scary, but it’s not as if we are unprepared, and, after all, G*d is with us.

Elected leaders of a people who use fear to rally people to their version of reality, while other leaders try to offer a reasonable voice that respects both sides. At its essence, there is no difference between this ancient story and our own day – immigration, gun safety, treatment of minorities among us, all these conversations are held hostage by fear mongering.

Panic ensues. Grumblings over the discomforts of the trail, which started last week, become louder, and the idea that someone threw out last week as an obviously absurd expression of disaffection – “let’s go back to Egypt” has actually become, this week, a plan that people are taking seriously.

No one really believes that so-and-so can become an elected leader, really…..

No one really thinks that the referendum can possibly go that way…

No one would really credit that we were better off before the Affordable Care Act….

Until it happens.

Fear has led them to rebel against the authority they elected to follow out of the hardships of slavery in Egypt. Not only the authority of Moshe and Aharon, but of the G*d they represent as well. Everything had seemed so settled and organized: the Ten Words that become a Covenant, the Mishkan built, the priests ordained and ready to go. But now the seeming stability is a crumbling facade. 

Back to Egypt? can anyone truly believe that this nonsense is the right path forward for our people?

Why do the Israelites give in to their fear? Is it only logical that they opted to believe the majority report? Neuroscience has established that “when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off.” Even if the only way to survive is to take a risky leap, fear will keep most of us crouched in place. 

In our own lives we face choices that seem risky, of which we are afraid. We may seek a sort of majority report from modern scouts (aka anyone who we think knows more than we do), and if a number of studies align we may be persuaded of a truth. Yet we have come to know that another study will be published next year, or in another generation, or when the technology improves, and we will discover that, perhaps, the opposite is true. 

There are limits to what we can know based on evidence. Sometimes – especially when fear is a factor – the majority is wrong. Unfortunately, it is only after the irrevocable step has been taken that we can clearly see where we went wrong.

The Israelites knew immediately after that they had blown it. And while repentance may heal relationships, it does not repair consequences. The generation of slavery has forever missed its chance to enter the Promised Land by demonstrating that they are too afraid to take the necessary risks. 

What went wrong? The ancient Sages of our tradition found a hint in last week’s verse: “They traveled from the mountain of G*d” (Numbers 10.33). Rabbi Hanina explains: this teaches us that they turned aside from following G*d” (BT Shabbat 116a), and in the Middle Ages the scholar Nakhmanides adds: “they traveled away from Mt Sinai gleefully, like a child who runs away from school, saying, ‘Perhaps G*d will give us more commands [if we stay]!’” (Ramban to Numbers 10.35).

The Israelites gave in to fear because – if we allow anachronism in order to suggest relevance – they were not immersed deeply enough in their Torah learning and in their Jewish practices. Ignorance allows fear to take hold – and for Ramban, the first step that leads away from mitzvot ends in an avoidable catastrophe that some grownup thoughtfulness – the kind afforded by learning, and faith in the community’s vision – could have prevented.

May we keep ourselves far from fear, with each other’s help and support, and may we do what we can to allay our neighbors’ fear through doing justice with them and for them.

Shabbat Naso: Lift Every Face

I have been away, even away from media, on a month sabbatical to mark my twenty-fifth year as a Rabbi. This is my first opportunity to seek with you some sense of response to the tragedy that occurred in my hometown on Sunday.

That day was Shavuot, the spring Festival of the Harvest. We should have been delighting in our gardens and our farmer’s markets and the gift of green in spring in ways that are so Portland, and in the Jewish way too, gathering to chant the praises of Hallel and eating dairy and marking the gift of moral law given to our people on that day (the spring harvest Festival is also the day on which we remember hearing the Ten Words at Sinai).

Instead of having the luxury of taking a day to consider how we might focus ourselves more on our daily internal journey toward spiritual wholeness and community, using our Ten Words as a moral support, we are confronted with the horror of the moral failure of our society. And we devolve toward the same endless morass of media coverage, and the same awful words. Hate. Guns. Death.

Once again guns. Once again the craven moral failure of congressional leadership, using this tragedy, once again, for political interests, proving themselves unable to lead us anywhere except further into darkness.

Black Lives Matter has awakened us to the failure of our police to “protect and serve”. What might it take for the United States of America to confront the failure of our elected leadership to represent us? There are more guns than people in the U.S. now.

As a Rabbi, I do not seek to offer you a definitive answer as much as to help you find the ways in which Jewish tradition will lead you toward your own sense of your best moral response to evil. I do not say whether to respond; especially one the other side of Sinai, still with its looming shadow above us, moral response is an urgent requirement.

What are you, an individual, to do? Jewish tradition offers you clear moral guidance. First: no Jew is only an individual. We have the support of community with us. And second, that community’s ancient rituals have just offered us The Ten Words, our oldest moral code. They include these: do not murder.

* don’t let go of your anger at the swelling tide of evil our elected representatives allow by avoiding gun control legislation. They are guilty of aiding and abetting mass murder by their refusal to act. Use your anger; let it give you strength to bind up wounds as you can, offer your support to the grieving, and fight off the helplessness that you cannot allow to seduce you into believing that there is nothing you can do. Love, as much as you can.

* show up. Know that your presence and your voice must be used for a moral response or you are abdicating your responsibility. Those leaders who refuse to act must hear that we see them and we condemn them. Find a way to respond meaningfully: write a letter, send a donation, participate in a march or a vigil, and vote, every time, knowledgeably.

Finally – the media has told us that this is a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, and indeed, statistics show that for the first time, the number of hate crimes against that community has overtaken the number focused against Jews. The Pulse night club billed itself as a gay club. Politicians who refuse to recognize that are criminally avoiding their leadership responsibility.

But it is important to let Shabbat Naso remind us of something difficult to parse, and that is our shared humanity. When is it best to hold a group apart for sympathy, or for condemnation for that matter? When must we note our differences so that we can cherish them as our havdalah prayer teaches, and we must we assert that we are all the same, created in the Image of G*d, as our Judaism asserts?

The attack at Pulse was an attack on us all. It was an attack on certain individuals for certain characteristics but it was also an attack on us all. Gandhi once said “I am a Christian, I am a Jew, I am a Hindu, and so are you.”  Learning from that prophet, seeing where his words coincide with Jewish ethics, we can add a verse: 

I am gay, lesbian, trans, and bisexual; 

I am an immigrant Muslim; 

I am a cowardly congressman, 

and so are you.

Hate divides us. If love is to conquer all, it must reach all. Yes, vote the criminally irresponsible out, but don’t hate them. That is the yetzer hara’, the evil impulse, and when we hate those who hate we do nothing but continue to feed and strengthen that hatred.

The parashah this Shabbat is Naso, which refers to the method of taking a census used by the ancient Israelites: to count each one was to account for each one, expressed in the Hebrew idiom naso et rosh, “lift up the head”. We don’t count by bodies, but by lifting up each head to look each person in the face. 

When we do that, when we lift every face, we see the human in each one, even those with whom we cannot relate. When we all find a way to look into the eyes of each other in our world, only then will we find a way forward out of this horrible, horrible pit.

Naso et rosh, lift your head, and help others to do so as well. Help the grieving to look up toward the sun and its promise in this time of our spring festival; help the LGBTQ community to lift up in pride this Sunday; and may you feel the strength that you are offering echo back to you so that you, too, can find a way to look up, and around, and see G*d’s presence reflected in this still so broken and hurting world – a promise, just like spring, that the small bud of love will grow again and again.

Shabbat Emor: With All Your Heart

Nobody sees a flower really; 

it is so small. 

We haven’t time, 

and to see takes time – 

like to have a friend takes time.

  – Georgia O’Keefe

Parashat Emor begins with a series of commands regarding the priests and their behavior: lo y’tama’ b’amav, they shall “not become defiled among their people”. (Lev. 21.1) Priests, who are set up as an elite among the people, must live up to the expectations of the position. This is a very ancient idea and still so relevant: when people occupy positions of high authority, we expect them to behave accordingly, and by that we mean ethically – and we are especially disappointed in them when they do not.

There’s an ethical dilemma, though, in that expectation: we who are not in that high position might come to see our own behavior as less significant. We might even say that it’s no big deal if we break a law, compared to if the priest/king/president/mayor does. 

Jewish tradition teaches differently. When the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire, the Rabbis sought ways to keep our religious (which includes ethical) traditions relevant even without the institutions they had been based upon and grew from. Jewish teaching emphasizes that each of us can defile not only ourselves, but our people, when we act unethically. It takes the heart right out of the community and slowly but surely, that community declines into cynicism. 

No – rather than give up the institutions that support our acts and teachings, they brilliantly interpreted them:

No more sacrifices? the Rabbis taught that G*d welcomed the “service of the heart”, and that our obedience to the ethical teachings of our tradition would be just as acceptable an offering – as a gift of thanksgiving for the gift of life, or as an offering of atonement.

No more Temple altar? our tables in our homes shall become our altar, they said, and each of our homes a mikdash me’at, a “small sanctuary”. Our homes are to echo and reinforce our ethics.

No more priests? the Rabbis pointed out, G*d declares in the Torah that “you shall all be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy people.” (Ex.19.6) Without a central Jewish institution, it was – and is – up to each of us to maintain the ethical standards that were to be upheld by the priests.

It is clear that we are to see the ethical commands of Judaism as incumbent upon us all equally. And these mitzvot are that which will keep us from becoming “defiled among the people”. But how to keep track of all the specifics in the way we are meant to behave, not only judging others but ourselves, in a life so full of distraction? How to, as the familiar mitzvah puts it, follow the path “with all your heart”?

The text of parashat Emor itself offers us a way to do just that: “you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete” (Lev. 23.15) Jewish tradition has developed this into an ethic of counting our days – all our days, not just these 49 between Pesakh and Shavuot. But these 7 weeks have become for us a time to deepen whatever practice we have for noticing our days, for not letting them slip by completely unexamined. When we take time each day to consider our day, we see them, and the days themselves become fuller for us, richer – and we are more able to be conscious ethical actors in our lives, rather than helplessly pulled from place to place, commitment to commitment. 

Then we are more able to act with all the heart. And that is what makes each day, and each week, “complete” in the sense of the Torah’s phrase.

Shabbat Kedoshim: Neither Inaccessible Nor Absurd

Our parashat hashavua (“section of the week”, i.e. the part of the Torah assigned by ancient Jewish tradition for this week in the Jewish calendar) begins with the most inaccessible and ludicrous of demands: 

“Speak to the People Israel and say to them, ‘be holy [kadosh], as I ‘ה your G*d am holy [kadosh]’.” (Lev. 19.2)

But when we investigate using our tried and true Jewish implements of interpretation, we find that what was thought was far from us is actually very near to us.

What does the Torah mean by kadosh, “holy”? The Rabbis who interpret our tradition, following the invitation to “turn it over and over, for everything is in it” (Pirke Avot 5.22) consider several options. To be kadosh, they offer, is perhaps to act like G*d, or, perhaps, it is to hold oneself separate. I suggest to you that it is both, and we must realize that there are times when to do one we must do the other.

This seems, as I said, either inaccessible or absurd. After all, don’t we strive for unity among all, and if so, why teach that we should hold ourselves separate? And acting like G*d, i.e. “holier than thou”, has a very bad ethical reputation in our world of political manipulation of religion.

But there is a different, more ancient insight from our tradition:

What does it mean to be “kadosh”, i.e. act like G*d?

R. Hama son of R. Hanina said: What does the Torah mean when it says You shall walk after the Lord your God? (Deut.13.5)  Is it, then, possible for a human being to walk after the Shekhinah [i.e. the Presence]; for has it not [also] been said: For HaShem your God is a devouring fire? (Deut.4.24)  

[It means that we should] to walk after the attributes of the Holy One of Blessing:

As G*d clothes the naked, for it is written: And ‘ה made for Adam and for Eve coats of skin, and clothed them (Gen.3.21)  

so you must also clothe the naked. 

The Holy One of Blessing visited the sick, for it is written: And ‘ה appeared unto Abraham by the oaks of Mamre (Gen.18.1)  

so you must also visit the sick. 

The Holy One of Blessing comforted mourners, for it is written: And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that ‘ה blessed Isaac his son (Gen.25.11)  

so you must also comfort mourners. 

The Holy One of Blessing buried the dead, for it is written: And ‘ה buried [Moshe] in the valley (Deut.34.6)  

so you must also bury the dead. (Talmud Bavli, Sotah 14a)

What does it mean to be “kadosh” i.e. be separate?

The 11th century Ashkenazi authority Rashi, using the interpretive tool of noting juxtaposition of texts, suggests that to be kadosh in this manner is to separate ourselves from the acts which are prohibited in the preceding parashah. In other words, just do what the Torah commands.

But the 13th century Sephardi teacher Nahmanides sees a more general idea. He points out that the Torah commands the priests to maintain a certain level of constant separateness from that which would render them unable to do their assigned tasks in the sacred space. (From a teaching by Rabbi Dov Landau of Bar Ilan University, Israel)

The rabbis of antiquity, when asked how we were to go on after the sacred space in Jerusalem, the Temple, was destroyed, answered that the Torah also says you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy people (Ex.19.6). Therefore, Nahmanides teaches, we should all see ourselves as priests in terms of fulfilling the command to be kadosh.

Now more than ever as we struggle to know what is true and good in a world that drags everything into relativity,

as we face feelings of demoralization over the forces of greed and cynicism in our national and local social circles,

as an American politician encourages bigotry and violence against those who would oppose his urge to power,

There is a way forward, and it is neither inaccessible nor absurd: be kadosh by separating yourself from cynicism and greed and demoralization. Be kadosh by holding on to the teachings that formed your sense of ethics. There is nothing inaccessible or absurd in the clear demand of the mitzvah to clothe the naked, visit the sick, comfort the mourner, and, as our Gevurot prayer puts it, “keep faith with those who sleep in the dust”.

Shabbat Akharei Mot: A Little Light

Shabbat Akharei Mot begins in a poignant way, with a reminder of a tragic accident. We read about the death of Nadav and Abihu in parashat Shemini, only a few weeks ago, before Pesakh: young men, their first day on the job after much rigorous training, and something, all unforeseen, went terribly wrong. Akharei Mot, “after the death”, presents its contents in that context: the tragic death of the young, with much to live for, and much yet to do.

Accidents such as this tragedy might shake a modern Western American’s faith. Some say “what kind of G*d would allow such a thing?”. Others simply deny that there can be a G*d in a world where innocents suffer. 

It makes this parashah all the more compelling, because after the deaths of the two young men are noted, the text goes on to describe the next stage in the training of the surviving priests. When they died, their father, Aaron, withdrew from his public responsibility and took some private time to mourn. And then the life of the community went on, and Aaron went on with his service to his community as High Priest.

The father of the dead boys did not say “I quit because I have suffered unfairly.” Aaron did not say “I don’t believe in G*d because my sons died accidentally.” And he did not say “I proclaim myself against all organized religion because this is horrible and doesn’t make sense.” 

Those three responses to tragedy are understandable when they are made as a cry of pain, but they are not intelligible. In essence, all three are ways of cursing the darkness rather than struggling to light a candle.  

This is not to say that a better response would be “G*d knows best” or “there was a reason for this” or, G*d forbid, “G*d chose to take them because G*d loved them so much.” Those responses make G*d out to be an emotional terrorist.

There is a third possible response to unimaginable tragedy. Caught between the utter darkness of a father’s grief and his stance so close to G*d, in all its wholeness and joy, the Torah records that “Aaron was silent.” (Lev. 10.3)

There is undeserved suffering in this world. There is much evil as well that we do to each other. But there is also much undeserved joy, and much good that we do to each other. Neither makes sense. There is a mystery at the heart of life that we can approach but will never discern. And in the face of that mystery there is nothing we can say. All we can do is to assert that while we cannot control, or even understand, why bad things happen, we can try to control and understand our responses – and we can choose to reach out to each other, to do what we can when we see suffering and alleviate it. And when all is dark, we can choose not to give in to it, to deny any hope of light or meaning or truth. We can choose to nurture the little light that we can see, if we look carefully, among ourselves.

That is why we gather in organized community and call it religious. It is there that we search together for hope, not certainty. Hope is all the light we have. 

Shabbat in Pesakh II: Bring Your Memory

Holidays are special. Families gather, or they don’t, and either way, the past is more present with us. Pesakh occurs during the full moon and, like the ocean under that same moon, the tides of life grow more intense. It is not unusual for older people to die on the eve of a holiday. There is something about these times, when our gaze wanders further, toward the horizon, and grows thoughtful.

Jews are a people of memory, and during Pesakh, even more so. We are to remember the Exodus from Egypt every day, and every Shabbat – and during this time of re-living it, kal v’homer, as our Sages say, “how much more so.”

On this Shabbat morning, the holy day which is the last day of Pesakh, we will recite the prayers of Yizkor, one of four times a year when we speak ancient words that express our hope not to be forgotten after our deaths, and remember our loved ones who have gone before us. If we forget them, it seems, in some way, as if they did not exist.

Curiously, though, the term yizkor does not mean “may I remember”. It literally means “May G*d remember”. This begs the question: does G*d forget? 

And such a clumsy question it is. In order to ask such a question one must presuppose an anthropomorphic G*d, a bit greater, perhaps, than the greatest human being, but not that much if this Divine Being, like us, has trouble remembering. 

I invite you to let your gaze upon that question grow wider, to encompass more of the true horizon and depth of the possibility. Keep in mind that on Pesakh, as on the other Festivals, we are commanded to remember. What does it mean to pray that G*d should remember, if that prayer is not the expression of a sense that memory moves through us and beyond us, part of something greater than us – and that something which is of us and beyond us and to which we belong as waves belong to the sea is G*d?

In the Torah text for this Second Shabbat during Pesakh we read:

שָׁלוֹשׁ פְּעָמִים בַּשָּׁנָה יֵרָאֶה כָל-זְכוּרְךָ אֶת-פְּנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחָר–בְּחַג הַמַּצּוֹת וּבְחַג הַשָּׁבֻעוֹת, וּבְחַג הַסֻּכּוֹת; וְלֹא יֵרָאֶה אֶת-פְּנֵי יְהוָה, רֵיקָם.

Three times in a year all your zakhur shall appear before ה your God in the designated place; at the feast of Matzah, and on the feast of Weeks, and on the feast of the Sukkah; and none shall not appear before ה empty;

אִישׁ, כְּמַתְּנַת יָדוֹ, כְּבִרְכַּת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לָךְ.

everyone shall give as you are able, according to the blessing of ה your God as you have known it. (Devarim 16.16-17)

The word zakhur is usually translated “males”, since the root z.kh.r can indeed mean “male”. But it also means “memory”. And memory has no gender….Three times a year, then, we are obligated to bring up, conjure up, offer up, our memories. If we do not, it is as if we have come to this great moment empty. But if we do, then all that has come before us sings through us, and we will know what it is to be Memory. 

On this Shabbat of the last day of Pesakh, may you remember all the lives you have known, and may they sing through you – and thus may you know the fullness of the blessing you bring to the world.

Shabbat of Pesakh I: How Long Should It Take?

In the Talmud, the ancient compendium of Jewish law and lore, we find that our ancestors the Sages envisioned our Pesakh Seder to have one primary motivation: prompting our children to curiosity. No modern expert in pedagogy would disagree that the key to meaningful learning is in being curious, in caring about learning the answer to some question that arises in our minds. So we see in Mishnah Pesakhim:

They pour a second cup [of wine] for him. And here the son questions his father. And if the son has insufficient understanding [to question], his father teaches him [to ask]: Why is this night different from all [other] nights? (M Pesakhim 10.4)

I have had a number of people ask me in the days leading up to this erev Pesakh: how long should the Seder take? As one friend put it, “two minutes is too short, and two hours, well….” The Haggadah itself doesn’t help much; it is full to the brim with all kinds of supplementary material, added by different authors in different times, but with the same goal: to make the Seder experience meaningful. To show you its relevance, and perhaps thereby to pique your curiosity, not just your child’s. We are each different in that regard, and that’s why there are so many Haggadot.

And so we know what we’re supposed to do – the Torah tells us that we must successfully transmit this story to the next generation. 

And so we have to ask ourselves not only how long does it take? 

but how long does it take me? 

What does it take for you to settle down, to notice, to begin to wonder?

The Talmud’s Rabbi Akiba, who lived during the Roman occupation of Israel, used to throw toasted grain at children during his Seder to keep them alert. (Some of us have been known to throw mini-marshmellows for hail during the recitation of the plagues.) That’s nice, since it keeps the children wondering what crazy thing you might do next. But what would it take for them to actually ask you – or for you yourself to formulate in your own mind – a real, living, curious question about some aspect of the Seder?

You would be done at that moment.

חג שמח וכשר

Shabbat haGadol: What’s So Great About It?

This Shabbat, on which we read parashat Metzora, is called the Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Shabbat, because this year it is the last Shabbat before Pesakh. There are several possible reasons why it got the moniker. One is that Jews spent more time than usual in the shul getting a refresher on all things Pesakh, especially the Haggadah and the halakha for cleaning the house. (It’s ironically appropriate that this week’s parashat hashavua mentions diseases that visit houses in this context. Hmmm – is a house full of clutter more likely to develop a disease?)

The Shabbat is called HaGadol also because of a striking feature of the special haftarah for this Shabbat, from the Book Malakhi 3.4-24. The passage calls upon a day on which all the world will be just, and fair.

“Behold, the day is coming – it will burn like a furnace – and all the arrogant, and all who do evil, will be like the worthless stubble left after the harvest. The day that is coming will set them ablaze and they will be left with neither root nor branch. But for you who have done well, and feared evil, for you a sun of righteousness will arise with healing in its wings, and you will come forth and dance like happy calves in the meadow.” (Malakhi 3.19-20)

All the centuries of commentators and all the interpreters of texts have been drawn to this apocalyptic vision, in which the wicked finally are punished and those who do good are rewarded, because they knew as well as we that such has never really been the case, at least not in any consistent, objective way.

It’s a real problem. There are many who deny any foundational meaning to their lives because of the reality of injustice – of evil done by powerful people and innocent suffering. It offends us all. But becoming a cynic in response is the most self-defeating of acts, because then no one moves to defeat the evil that does exist. And then it wins. And the opposite – believing in the vision, and taking a vindictive pleasure in the idea that soon, they will get theirs – is one of the more dangerous impulses informing this electoral cycle.

So what is the point of this haftarah, and why do we hear it chanted on this Shabbat before Pesakh? Most likely it has to do with the mention of Elijah the Prophet, who will come to us at the End of Days to proclaim that finally, everything will be all right. We put out a cup of wine for him, a cup that symbolizes all the unanswered questions of halakhah, and in that way, of all the questions that keep us awake at night, and can’t be answered.

Some day, Elijah will tell us this (or we’ll figure it out for ourselves and therefore summon him): there is only one answer for those who ask why life isn’t fair, and why the innocent suffer, and why some take refuge in lies which are promises that can’t be kept. And that is to change your perspective. The interpreters and commentators of our tradition teach that those who run after power, and do evil with it, don’t even know what they are missing: the Shekhinah, the Presence of G*d, that one can only sense in g’milut hasadim, the practice of loving kindness.

It will be all right, if we put our faith in the meaning of being kind, no matter how many people are mean. They will never know that what they really want is right here, in the next mitzvah you do, as long as you do it lovingly, kindly, with delight. That message is what is so great about this Shabbat.

Shabbat HaHodesh: The First Month For You

“This month shall be for you the first of months”. This is the way the special Torah reading for this Shabbat begins. With Rosh Hodesh (“the head of the month”) tomorrow begins the first Jewish month, Nisan. 

If so, why is it that, even though the Torah clearly indicates that the High Holy Days are observed in the seventh month, we wish each other a happy new year at Rosh HaShanah, called “the head of the year”? 

The answer illuminates the development of Jewish identity from antiquity. Once, we were farmers and herders, and the beginning of spring was literally the time of all things new – baby lambs and goats, new growth in field and tree. It was the natural rhythm of our relationship with G*d, and it echoed through all our acts as we excitedly, and worriedly, moved through this most vitally important of seasons to one’s physical life and well-being. With the growth of each healthy new plant and animal our own future seemed more assured.

As a result of the industrial revolution, of modernity and urbanization, many of us have to “go out” in order to connect with that most fundamental level of nature, of baby lambs now found in petting farms and new shoots in a community garden or on a window sill. It’s no less profoundly true that G*d is found in nature, just that we seek G*d less in the Great Outdoors and more in the Mysterious Inner Depths of our own being, and in our relationships with others.

We struggle to nurture a garden of morals, rather than (sorry) morels. And so the seventh month, with its Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, have become our moment for taking stock, turning a new leaf (even if only metaphorically), and starting over.

But this month of Nisan is still called “first”. Note what we are commanded: “this shall be for you the first of months.” Perhaps the buried hint is that each of us, for ourselves, can still relate to this time of new growth as a time that encourages new hope. And from that thought, of course, we move to the teaching of our embracing, loving tradition – that every month, every day, every moment can be for you the first of months.

What “first” needs your nurturing right now? what small green shoot of promise is there for you, simply awaiting your deeper gaze into its true potential?

Shabbat Parah: This Calf Makes Sense, This Cow Does Not

This Shabbat is called Shemini, “eighth”, because the parashah begins with an account of the eighth and final day of the ritual of ordination into the priesthood for the very first High Priest, Aaron, and his sons, who were now his assistants. For seven days they have carried out a precise order of sacrifices and purity practices, and now they are ready, body and soul, to take on the role of intermediary between G*d and the People of Israel.

What is the first thing you do when you are finished with the process of getting ready for a new role? Maybe you are pregnant and preparing for the role of mother, or maybe you are graduating college and preparing for the role of participatory citizen in your community. Perhaps you are finishing orientation for a new job, or completing training for a volunteer responsibility, or getting ready for a mikveh that will turn a significant page in your life.

It seems a very positive, promising moment. But then the High Priest receives his instructions for his first official act: “Take a calf [עגל] of the herd for a sin offering” (Lev. 9.2) A sin offering? How depressing on the first day of the new reality! 

The Zohar explains:

“Aaron was commanded to offer a calf as a sacrifice – because it is the offspring of a cow – to atone for that other calf that Aaron made, thereby sinning against the cow, who is unblemished, consummation of the faithful of Israel.” (Zohar, Shemini 3.37a) 

This calf of the herd is offered in atonement for the golden calf. That much is clear. But what is the other, unblemished cow?

The other cow that the mystical tradition mentions here is the cow for which this parashah is also named: Shabbat Parah, the Shabbat of the Cow, or, more specifically, the Red Heifer. 

This third of the special Shabbatot occurring in the weeks before Pesakh is named for the special additional Torah that we read. It describes a recipe for creating a substance that purifies a person who has been in contact with a dead body. The recipe requires a sacrifice of “a red cow without blemish” which is completely burned. Its ashes are mixed with cedar wood, hyssop, and “crimson stuff”, and the resulting ashes are kept in a safe place, to b used for “waters of purification” when necessary.

The curious part of this, and the reason why this is the cow that does not make sense, is the following: the priest who oversees the concoction becomes impure and must undergo a purification ritual of some hours. The same is true of the person who moves the ashes. How is it that handling something pure makes one impure?

No one, not the great sages of yore and certainly no one since, understands this. It is said that Shlomo the King, who was by legend said to be the wisest of all human beings who ever lived (tradition relates that he even knew the languages of all the animals), was unable to fathom the secret of the this red cow, and after contemplating it, he was said to have declared “I said, ‘I will become wise, but it is far from me’ .”(Kohelet 7:23) 

This leads us to the Two Kinds of Halakhah; the mishpat and the hok. Mishpat is the Jewish law that makes sense, such as the prohibitions against killing or stealing. Hok, on the other hand, is the category of kashrut, of the do’s and don’t’s around holy days, of this strange cow purification ritual.

For us who swim in the nearly endless sea of Jewish tradition, there will always be mystery, and we should learn to welcome it. It keeps us humble: we don’t understand everything, and we can’t. It keeps us mindful: I am doing this because I am a Jew, and there’s no other reason. And it helps the under-used imaginative side of our brains keep up with the over-emphasized rational side.

And it is a good reminder that when we stand on the edge of a new experience, there will be that which we cannot understand, and cannot possibly prepare for. And more: one does not enter a new experience “clean” of all that one has ever been. Standing on the edge of what will be, we must recognize that we bring all we ever were with us. Both cows, the one that symbolizes all you understand and the one that reminds you of all that you don’t, come with you.

Thus we go forward: humbly, realistically, humanly.