Shabbat BeHa’alot’kha: It Won’t be Perfect, Do It Anyway

There is a difference between Christian and Jewish religious ethics: Christian theology posits that the messiah has already arrived, and therefore they are called upon to practice messianic ethics. For Jews, who are still waiting for a messiah, all we have are messy ethics. – Dr Byron Sherwin ז״ל

For this week in which we read the parashah named BeHa’alot’kha (“as you are lifting it up”) the haftarah includes a line which becomes a leitmotif of millennial hope for the people of Israel. 

בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֗וּא נְאֻם֙ ה’ צְבָא֔וֹת תִּקְרְא֖וּ אִ֣ישׁ לְרֵעֵ֑הוּ אֶל־תַּ֥חַת גֶּ֖פֶן וְאֶל־תַּ֥חַת תְּאֵנָֽה׃ 

In that day—declares HaShem—you will be inviting each other to the shade of vines and fig trees. (Zekharyah 4.1, from the haftarah for Shabbat BeHa’alot’kha)

More than one source rehearses it: vines and fig trees, lush and abundant, beneath which we will sit and no one will make us afraid. In other words: personal security and enough to eat, the recipe for at least momentary peace, in a world too troubled to hope for more.

To be Jewish is to be optimistic about the days to come; to believe that it is possible that there will be vines and figs in your future. We have called this hope by many names. It is called “messianic” for the focus that it had, at one time, on a human being who would appear and lead us out of oppression. This form of optimism took shape during the Roman occupation of Israel over two millennia ago, and it is our form of the Camelot legend: the once and future king will arise – in our case that king is a descendent of David – and we will all live happily ever after.

The messianic hope existed before it became personified in the idea of the rightful, just ruler; it is hinted at in every Shabbat, when we are to follow traditions and practices that are “a foretaste of the world to come”: food for the body and mind, rest for the body and spirit, and love and camaraderie, are paramount for one day a week. On Shabbat we are meant to experience what the messianic age will be like, and everyone will sit under their vine and under their fig tree, unafraid.

We are, demonstrably, a long way from such an Eden. We do not live in a messianic time. The allure of the false messiah is understandable in this days, and we can related to our people’s willingness to fall under the spell of Shabtai Zvi or Jacob Frank when times are hard and we long for clear direction. Our days are not certain nor are our actions; we live not in a time of “messianic ethics” but of “messy ethics.”

In our parashah for this week we see the Israelites setting out from Mt Sinai for home. Their path will be messy, yet full of hope. Just like us, what they imagine at the beginning of their journey will bear very little resemblance to what will actually happen. Much of what will be attempted will fail – not only the acts of the Israelites and of Moshe Rabbenu, but those acts of HaShem, as well. The philosopher David Hartman used to describe the entire Torah as one long failure of HaShem, time after time overestimating the humans she had created but couldn’t figure out.

The Torah was given in the wilderness. Most of the Torah describes wandering, without a home or fixed abode. That is our spiritual inheritance. We are still on that journey, still wandering, still bearing with imperfections, failures, and messy ethics. May we also, always, continue to carry with us the hope that kept them going: we will make mistakes, but something better is possible, and we can build it.

Shabbat Naso 5786

“if I were a rich man…”

הַמַּבְדִיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל. חַטֹּאתֵינוּ הוּא יִמְחוֹל. זַרְעֵנוּ וְכַסְפֵּנוּ יַרְבֶּה כַּחוֹל. וְכַכּוֹכָבִים בַּלָּיְלָה

May HaShem who separates between the holy and the mundane forgive our sins and increase our offspring and our money like sand and like stars at night – from the Havdalah prayer

This is the oldest example of the Priestly Blessing found to date. Scratched on a slender silver plate that was scrolled and inserted in the burial garments of a priest, it was found in a First Temple Period burial cave in the Valley of Hinnom. The scroll is the earliest known artifact written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Read more here

Toward the end of this week’s parashah, we encounter an example of ancient Israelite blessing formula. Known as “the priestly blessing”, this three-part recitation is short and instantly recognizable to anyone who is familiar with the parent blessing of the child on erev Shabbat, or the Shabbat morning liturgy:

יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ ה’ וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ         

‘ה bless you and protect you!

יָאֵ֨ר ה’ ׀ פָּנָ֛יו אֵלֶ֖יךָ וִֽיחֻנֶּֽךָּ         

‘ה deal kindly and graciously with you! 

יִשָּׂ֨א ה’ ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם         

‘ה bestow [divine] favor upon you and grant you peace! (Numbers 6.24-26)

“May G*d bless you” is such a common-sounding utterance of benevolence that we hardly stop to consider what it actually means. While we cannot know what the ancients meant, we have lots of definitions from the Talmud onward in Jewish interpretative history, which tell us, at the very least, Jewish opinions from different moments in our history as to what would constitute a state of blessing. 

Here are some of the answers to the question “what does being blessed mean”?

  1. children. The Hatam Sofer tells us that the Sages of the Talmudic period defined “bless” to mean having sons, and “protect” indicates having daughters, since they need more protection.

“Children are a blessing” is a well-known saying among Jews. Once upon a time children meant extra hands to do the work of family and tribal survive, as well as to ensure continuity into future generations. Not all of us have children out of our own bodies, but all of us are included in the blessing (as children) and in the expectation that we all help to raise the next generation of Jews within our circles of community.

2. The Da’at Zekanim says that the blessing is expressed in the capacity to do more mitzvot. There is also a well-known saying that mitzvah goreret mitzvah, “one mitzvah brings another mitzvah”; another version is that the reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah (which can specifically mean that when you help one person, someone else will then know whom to ask for help). 

3. wealth; money. Rashi explains that “bless” means with wealth, and “protect” means that no one will steal it from you.

This is probably the most difficult idea to square with the typical connotations of blessing, much less holiness, but Jewish tradition has never worshipped poverty, nor has it demonized wealth. Pragmatically, one needs to do well enough to survive, and if one can do better than that, all the better, for wealth creates a lifesaving buffer against hard times.

The ethical challenge lies in refusing to let wealth become a fetish, that is, something with magical power to save, reminiscent of an idol. Jewish ethics treat wealth as a form of luck or reward, but poverty is not equal to immorality, or something that is deserved; both poverty and wealth are a result of the vicissitudes of fate. As the Yiddish song says, if you have it, good – share it. If you don’t have it, hang on; the wheel of life continues to turn. That we know for sure.

In Jewish thought and practice it’s not about one’s wealth, but about what one does with it. The highest form of its use is to lift up others – something that is true both of financial well-being and of social privilege. This sense of it informs the famous Ladder of Tzedakah (the word which means justice, not charity) taught by the Rambam, Maimonides. The eight levels are (in ascending importance):

8. When donations are given grudgingly.

7. When one gives less than he should, but does so cheerfully.

6. When one gives directly to the poor upon being asked.

5. When one gives directly to the poor without being asked.

4. Donations when the recipient is aware of the donor’s identity, but the donor still doesn’t know the specific identity of the recipient.

3. Donations when the donor is aware to whom the charity is being given, but the recipient is unaware of the source.

2. Giving assistance in such a way that the giver and recipient are unknown to each other. Communal funds administered by responsible people are also in this category.

1. The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.

The sharing of what we have enough of is of vital importance in Jewish tradition, so much so that even a poor person who has only one coin is not to be denied the chance to fulfill the mitzvah; they are to seek out another poor person who has only one coin, and exchange their coins. Such is the empowerment experienced by reaching out and offering one’s hand to another.

The ultimate Jewish dream of wealth is not collecting houses or cars, nor building the biggest and most monopolistic of businesses; it is not for influencing judges nor for ingratiating oneself with others – and it’s certainly not about trying to buy one’s way out of aging. Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof said it best: if a Jew is lucky enough to be wealthy, then one is able to do mitzvot without worrying about starving.

What is wealth? it is the situation of having enough to share: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with HaShem, with no obstacles and no lack of capacity. 

Now that’s a blessing. 

Shabbat Shavuot: Process Not Place

Receiving the Torah, Moving Toward Wholeness

Giving of the Torah: Becoming Whole

ראוים היו ישראל לקבל התורה במדבר דווקא, כי האדם שנקרא על שם האדמה, כאשר אין לו תורה נחשב כמדבר שאין  בו עשב וצמח האדמה. ובשביל חסרון האדם שהוא כמו מדבר ניתנה לו התורה להשלימו, ואז האדמה הזאת מוציאה אילנות וצמחים שלה.

It was appropriate for Israel to receive the Torah in, of all places, the wilderness, for a person, adam, is named for the earth, adamah, and when a person is without Torah they are considered like a wilderness, in which there is no green and no growth. It is in order to respond to the lack in a human being, which makes us like the wilderness, that the Torah was given to us, to make us whole, and then this “earth” is able to bring forth trees and growing things.  

attributed to the Maharal of Prague in Itturei Torah, Shavuot

In his college ethics class, a young product of Jewish community practice and learning recently told his mother, he discovered that he already knew much of what is considered basic Western ethics. Of course he does; the way we are meant to treat others is found in our Torah, and transmitted through not only our small Jewish community over the ages but adopted and spread far and wide via Christianity – which is the foundation of modern Western ethics even in the secular world.

We tend to believe that our sense of right and wrong is ingrained in us, in some way: we “just know” what’s just and what’s a travesty. Yet one has only to study comparative anthropology to discover that very much, if not all, of our ethical foundations are relative to our culture. This relativity unmoors certainty and left thinkers of the Enlightenment scrambling for grounding, gifting us all the –isms of modern philosophy. 

This is not to say that Torah contains perfect ethics, but that is, anyway, not a Jewish argument for authority. As Dr Byron Sherwin ז״ל used to say, where Christianity may assert that they have a certainty couched in their messianic ethics, all we have is “messy ethics”. The Torah does not offer universal (Kantian) ethics; to look for them in the revelation gifted to us via Moshe at Mount Sinai is to be stymied, discouraged, and, for many, finally, dismissive.

This is a misunderstanding of the gift’s meaning, which might be better grasped by way of the metaphor often used for the Sinai moment between HaShem and the people of Israel: a marriage, with the Torah as our ketubah. 

Consider the traditional Jewish ketubah: it consists of a promise that, in the years to come, the parameters of mutual trust and respect specified in the document will be followed, and, in the ancient language, the groom “will provide for his bride the way a Jewish man ought to”. Beyond the initial details, none are laid out; the text does not indicate exactly what trust and respect, or “ought to”, means. Why? because each case is different, and each outcome of a successful marriage is unique. No two human beings are alike; no link between two will resemble each other by very much. Most of the relationship is worked out in the living of it, and the balance that succeeds between two (or more) who are committed to each other in a family is a constantly changing reality.

The Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew (1524-1609), offers us the best metaphor for understanding the gift of Torah in this season of the spring harvest, as green thrives around us and life turns its face to the warming sun, we are each a creature just like the earth upon which we live. We, too, turn toward the sun; we, too, are capable of giving forth growth, and fruit that nurtures not only ourselves but others. 

Torah is key to understanding our potential, because it does not present a perfect, finished system followed by saints. It is a record of ongoing struggle and very human failure on the way to the occasional joyful success, and even fulfillment. The Torah does not tell us; it shows us the way toward growth, and toward thriving. It is not and will not ever be a finished, perfect thing; it is a relationship. Between you and me; between us and HaShem. 

We exist between and among and because of, and instead of looking for an endpoint we need to get used to the idea that what we have been gifted is a support and a guide, not a book of answers that can be wielded like a recipe book of potions and spells. The only magic here is what we make, when we take the offered gift seriously enough to let it support us in the daily struggle to make sense of our failures and our – please let there be some – successes.

That is why Torah study never ends. There is always some new context, some different thought, something that didn’t come up before. The context may be similar, but something is different; the details resemble some other situation, yet there’s something new here. The answer is not on the page, nor in our hearts and minds, but somewhere in between, which is where HaShem has always promised us that we can find it. Eternally present yet always new.

In the Jerusalem Talmud this was expressed by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who asserted that אֲפִילוּ מַה שֶׁתַּלְמִיד וָותִיק עָתִיד לְהוֹרוֹת לִפְנֵי רַבּוֹ כְּבָר נֶאֱמַר לְמֹשֶׁה בְּסִינַי “Even what a competent student will discover before his teacher was said to Moses on Sinai.” (Peah 2.4) This is a way of saying that whatever we see has already been seen, yet what we see is entirely new, and no one ever saw it before. And both of these are true within a truly growing relationship with a loved one, with a community, and with HaShem.

Hag Shavuot sameakh, may you recognize and celebrate your harvest on this Shavuot holy day. May you feel yourself well and truly on the path, at least sometimes, toward your  wholeness.

Shabbat BaMidbar: Standing Together

  כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה

kol yisrael arevin zeh bazeh

All Israel are guarantors, each for each other

שאו את ראש כל עדת בני ישראל. אין עלויין של ישראל אלא בקיום התורה, ועל כן אחז הכתוב לשון שאו שהוא לשון כולל

“take a census of the entire assembly of the Jewish people, etc.” The Jewish people do not experience an ascent of a spiritual kind unless they perform the laws of the Torah, therefore the text speaks in the plural, to include everyone. (Rabbi Bahya ben Asher, BaMidbar 1.2)

In this week’s parashat hashavua the reality of our shared fate is beginning to sink in. We are all included in the count that takes place as our parashah opens, which demonstrates just this truth: we are in this together. We stood at Sinai together, regardless of our individual readiness; similarly, we suffer together the results of the sins of some of us (see: Golden Calf, the Waters of Meribah, and so many more). We are counted together; we count, together.

There is a response often used when two Jews meet for the first time, yet feel that somehow they’ve met before. “You must have been standing next to me at Sinai.” Spiritually, it is true: we all find ourselves equally challenged by the command of Sinai to live up to our potential, and, sady, equally suffering in a world in which we do not.

Our acts affect each other’s lives, even as a bomb falling in Iran can change the U.S. balance of power with China. Closer to our own collective Jewish conscience, we know that Jewish violence against Palestinians embitters the spiritual existence of all Jews. Compounding the agony, we know that the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis is too often weaponized, monetized and idolized by antisemites.

We are, each of us, unique, yet we are all interconnected, and our lives not only encounter each other’s lives – we affect each other in ways we can barely know. As true as this statement might be of all human beings, identically composed of stardust (and, apparently, microplastics) as we are, all the more so is it true of the Jewish people.

We are counted together. Our people has known, and taken for granted, for a long time, that what happens to one of us affects all of us. The caricature of the old Jew reading a terrible headline and worrying that the criminal’s name might be Jewish comes from lived experience. For example, when the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was murdered by Herschel Grynzspan, the Nazis took advantage of the fact that the assassin was Jewish to carry out the murderous rampage known as Kristallnacht.

Today the Nakba is commemorated; this day of Palestinian mourning for the displacement, death and destruction of 1948 coincides this year with Jerusalem Day, on which Jews celebrate the reunification of the three-thousand year capital city of the Jewish people. The sadness clashing against the joy is nearly unbearable. We did not commit the Nakba, yet we inherit its legacy; we were not there when the first Israeli soldiers reached the Western Wall in 1967, but we benefit from the consequences of that day.

The tidal wave of trauma coming out of the land of Israel and Palestine seems overwhelming and without end. Yet: we know that when we stand together even in small numbers against evil, it counts. 

The idea that we are all interconnected is also a long-standing positive asset for our people. Halakhically, one of us can speak, or recite a brakha, on behalf of others in our community, as Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki explains, because of the well-established understanding that

  כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה kol Yisrael arevin zeh bazeh, “all Israel are guarantors for each other” (Rashi on BT Rosh HaShanah 29a:17)



On this Nakba Day, Jerusalem Day and erev Shabbat BaMidbar, may we be grateful for those who stand up against Jewish hate on our behalf. Their group is called Standing Together, and they offer us a redemptive opportunity when they speak for us. They do so easily: support them with a donation if you can, with a shared Instagram post and follow if you can – and with a small lift of your own head and heart, as you are counted for justice in the face of all this pain.






Shabbat Emor: from suffering to hope

בַּחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִ֜י בְּאַרְבָּעָ֨ה עָשָׂ֥ר י֛וֹם בֵּ֥ין הָעַרְבַּ֖יִם יַעֲשׂ֣וּ אֹת֑וֹ עַל־מַצּ֥וֹת וּמְרֹרִ֖ים יֹאכְלֻֽהוּ׃ לֹֽא־יַשְׁאִ֤ירוּ מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ עַד־בֹּ֔קֶר וְעֶ֖צֶם לֹ֣א יִשְׁבְּרוּ־ב֑וֹ כְּכׇל־חֻקַּ֥ת הַפֶּ֖סַח יַעֲשׂ֥וּ אֹתֽוֹ׃ 

They shall offer [Pesakh Sheni] in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and they shall not leave any of it over until morning. They shall not break a bone of it. They shall offer it in strict accord with the law of the passover sacrifice. Number 9.11-12

This week in parashat Emor we read of the special rules regarding the priests; among them, the prohibition against coming near any dead body except for close family. It was recognized in rabbinic Judaism that a dead body does not transmit ritual impurity, yet those who acted as connector between the Israelite people and HaShem were nevertheless required to distance themselves – from what?

Death is linked in the human psyche with the end: the end of life, of relationships, and of hope. In Ezekiel’s famous vision of the valley of dry bones, this metaphor for hopelessness is a stark depiction of the state of our ancestors after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE: 

בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם הָעֲצָמ֣וֹת הָאֵ֔לֶּה כׇּל־בֵּ֥ית יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל הֵ֑מָּה הִנֵּ֣ה אֹמְרִ֗ים יָבְשׁ֧וּ עַצְמוֹתֵ֛ינוּ וְאָבְדָ֥ה תִקְוָתֵ֖נוּ נִגְזַ֥רְנוּ לָֽנוּ׃ 

“O mortal, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’ (Ezekiel 37.11(

It’s fascinating to see that this parashah intersects with the date of Pesakh Sheni, the “second Pesakh” legislated to accomodate anyone who, despite their best efforts, was unable to properly celebrate the Pesakh Seder on the prescribed date. In Numbers 9 Moshe is asked by just such a group what they might do in order to fulfill the mitzvah, and Moshe does what he always does when asked a very good halakhic question: he goes to One who knows more than he. HaShem then ordains Pesakh sheni, a “second Pesakh” to be observed by those who need a make-up date, exactly one month after the Pesakh Seder, on the 14th of the second month.

Perhaps our parashah is not warning us, through our religious representatives, to stay away from the presence of (only) physical death, but, more significantly, to stay far from the spiritual death that takes place when we lose hope. On this May Day, as we each struggle with the debilitating fear of so much social destruction, we are sent this message from the Universe: with hope, through hope, because of hope, we take another step today.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ז״ל wrote a Haggadah. Even if you do not need to observe Pesakh Sheni, I invite you to join me in contemplating this part of his retelling of what it takes to go from oppression to freedom. May it inspire us all to distance ourselves from the death of hope, and to make room for the second chances – and third, and fourth – that we all need.

I am awestruck at the courage of successive generations of Jews, survivors of the Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, expulsions, ghettos, and pogroms, who wrestled with God in prayer and lamentation, who did not accept their fate passively or silently, giving way either to blind submission (“such is the will of God”) or to a bleak, Greek view of fate, but who continued – in the fine phrase of Nadezhda Mandelstam – to “hope against hope.” Jews are not blind to the existence of evil. We feel it, taste it, each year afresh, in the bread of oppression and the bitter herbs of slavery. But we refuse with every fiber of our being to be resigned to it. To understand the Jewish people, one must listen to the way it tells its story. A people whose narrative “begins with shame and ends with praise” is one that, knowing in its bones the reality of evil, did not cease wrestling with the angel of death until it discovered the path from suffering to hope. (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Haggadah, Maggid) 

ken yehi ratzon, so may it be for us.

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat Akharei Mot/Kedoshim 5786

Shabbat Akharei Mot Kedoshim 5786:
Be Holy (Like a Pharisee) 
(Pharisees), [literally: “those who are separated” from self-indulgence, as will be explained, or “those who practice self-restraint”]. – R Moshe ben Nakhman
 This Shabbat is the first after the 78th observance of the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Balancing a fine line between my own feelings and the far more complicated ones of my family members in Israel, I sent, unironically, a “happy 78th Israel Independence day” note, and received back the short and pained “78 yes, happy no.” 

“This is not what we meant,” said my Israeli great aunt Rina already twenty years ago. She was one of the young Jews chased away from their European homes in the 1930s who had the resilience to turn their homelessness into a crusade for Jewish dignity among the nations, and sought co-existence and equal respect with her Palestinian neighbors. But “this is the meaning of our destiny” say the Israeli Jewish fascists who seek to eradicate Palestinian presence in the ancient land of Canaan. Both can quote the Torah to justify their sense of how Jews must act.  

It is neither true nor ethical that our opinions about Israel must be the base upon which we judge our communities and each other; but the more subtle truth is that our communities will not survive if we do not develop a Jewish ethical opinion about Israel that is genuinely rooted in Torah and Jewish teaching. 

“It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it” (Proverbs 3.18) we are told about our Torah – our mysterious, maddening, incomprehensible and incomparable Torah. Sometimes that means that despite any misgivings we may feel justified in having, we are still willing to engage with it. 

This Shabbat we are reading a double parashah which includes the famous command קדושים תהיו כי קדוש אני ה’ אלהיכם “be holy as I HaShem am holy” (Lev. 19.2). But even the devil can quote Scripture, we know; because the Torah also has within it that which seems to justify the massacre of innocents as long as they are not the people of Israel, it can seem useless to engage with it. For that reason, many Jews in the West have turned away from Jewish teachings and toward the tenets of Western civilization as a base for their ethics (ironically those ethics are derived from Jewish sources as well as the later Christian ones also echoed there). 

For those of us who understand that lived Torah is far more complex, we who are still holding on and insisting that there is life here, there is – always – learning here as well. In the twelfth century the Catalonian Rabbi Moshe ben Nakhman, the Ramban, addressed our problem precisely: one can follow the letter of the law while sacrificing its spirit upon the altar of self-interest and self-gratification. For this reason, the Ramban said, HaShem commands us to be holy. 

in the Torah of the Kohanim [Leviticus] I have seen it mentioned without any qualification, saying: “Be self-restraining.” Similarly, the Rabbis taught there: “And ye shall sanctify yourselves, and be ye holy, for I am Holy. Just as I am Holy, so be you holy…” And in my opinion, this abstinence is … the self-control mentioned throughout the Talmud, which confers upon those who practice it the name of P’rushim (Pharisees), [literally: “those who are separated” from self-indulgence, as will be explained, or “those who practice self-restraint”]. – R Moshe ben Nakhman, commentary on Leviticus 19.2 

The Ramban explains that you shall be holy is the meta-message of the Torah; that after all the specific mitzvot have been observed, one must ensure that the overall effect of one’s acts are “right and good” (Deut. 6.18). This, for Ramban, is the meaning of “self-restraint”; it includes both the Jewish traditional ethic of compromise and  also that of “going beyond the line of justice”, for example by not insisting on one’s rights just because one has them, if ceding part of one’s case might bring about a better, more righteous result. In this system, greed is not good. 

Be holy. Make sure that the details add up to righteousness. This is the ultimate Jewish stance, and it cannot be entirely codified because the perfect system is one that makes room for change, mistakes, and imperfection. It depends upon a sense that there is a meta-message, an overarching truth that all our acts must be measured by. The Prophet Isaiah said it best:וַיִּגְבַּ֛הּ ה’ צְבָא֖וֹת בַּמִּשְׁפָּ֑ט וְהָאֵל֙ הַקָּד֔וֹשׁ נִקְדָּ֖שׁ בִּצְדָקָֽה HaShem is exalted through justice; the Holy One is sanctified through righteousness. (Isaiah 5.16) 

One cannot legislate for, or against, every eventuality; a living community is one which shares a common sense of what our tradition calls holiness. It is in whether we as a community are able to carry out the definition of holiness as our tradition teaches it: to lift up the fallen, to help bring healing to the sick, to clothe the naked and care for the vulnerable.  Regardless of what the state of Israel does and how we feel about it, this is what our community must be about; to base our belonging on whether we agree about Israel is to refuse the challenge of how to be holy.  

it is a mitzvah to support holiness where we can, and it is a mitzvah to give in honor of a beloved one’s memory. On this week of, unfortunately, Israeli Jewish oppression of Palestinians, you can support the cause of righteousness in the land of Promise for two peoples:
House of Hope
Hand in Hand
Rabbis for Human Rights
 

Shabbat of Pesakh 5786: That Matzah on Our Back

מָזְגוּ לוֹ כוֹס שֵׁנִי….מַתְחִיל בִּגְנוּת וּמְסַיֵּם בְּשֶׁבַח

They pour the second cup, and begin with the disgrace of our ancestors, ending with glory (Mishnah Pesakhim 10.4)

1. They pour the first cup….and recite the blessing for the day

2. They bring unleavened bread, lettuce, and haroset…they bring the Pesakh lamb

3. They pour the second cup, and the talk begins with disgrace (or lowly status) of our ancestors, and concludes with glory. We consider the Torah verse “my ancestor was a wandering Aramean”

4. They pour the third cup and recite the prayer after eating

5. The fourth cup: Hallel is recited

This version of the Passover celebration, the earliest we have, is dated to the Second Temple period, during the Persian, then Greek, then Roman, occupation of Israel. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of this description is that the entire evening is organized around four cups of wine, and each cup has a text or discussion topic attached to it. The discussion is central to the Seder because the event was based upon the Greco-Roman symposium; quite often, the discussions that took place were triggered by foods or acts that were part of the ritual meal.

What is unlike any other symposium of which we know is the topic to be discussed after the second cup: g’nut, “disgrace (or lowly status) of our ancestors”; as it is said, “once we were slaves, now we are free”. The Haggadah preserves this as the origin story of the Jewish people: we began as slaves. 

Although we learn that it is the great mitzvah of Pesakh to see ourselves as going out of Egypt just as our ancestors did, on this Pesakh, it is difficult to feel free. Even more, it is difficult to imagine ourselves in the place of the oppressed, for, as terrible as it is to recognize, our people is now an oppressor. It is so painfully difficult to confront the reality of Israeli persecution of Palestinians that there are those among us who would prefer to walk away from the entire exercise of Jewish identity and call it meaningless.

Yet there is something that rings true about the ancient message, and, often, the key to healing lies in the wound itself. We are not slaves to another people in these days, perhaps, but we are in disgrace: Jews are embarrassed before the entire world. We, the people who gave the world the idea of laws that protect the weak and free the captive; we as a people have not upheld our own teaching. We as a people have made a mockery of Jewish ethics and a joke of Jewish justice.

As hard as it is to remain human in this situation, we deserve the same grace that we would give any other sinner. So let us ask, compassionately: what could possibly have caused this people to betray its path so tragically? this people has suffered terribly for generation upon generation. Too often helpless, we have seen those we love hurt or killed, that we have built destroyed. An abused child may grow up to hurt others because of the unhealed injury in their own soul. Is it so strange that Jews with power not only are corruptible like any other people with power, but that we should, on some subconscious level, seem to be bent on punishing a people that reminds us, too much, of our own painful helplessness in the past?

There is a Hasidic teaching which intuits what modern psychology can validate: individuals hate most in others that which reminds us of the part of ourselves we cannot accept. To be vulnerable, helpless, and terrified is agonizing; to be reminded of that time in our own past is insupportable.

Yet this is what we must face: we were helpless and abandoned. This is the meaning of the g’nut, “disgrace”, of the ancient text. This is the key to the entire experience: if the mitzvah is to see ourselves as going out of slavery, then our freedom is from our own past scars. We are not free until we cease to act out of our own past hurt. We are not free until we can love, forgive, learn, and live freely – no matter what has enslaved us in the past. We are not free until we stop carrying that unrisen dough on our backs.

May this Pesakh be liberating for us all, and may we find the courage to follow the path toward healing.

Shabbat HaGadol: Leaving Egypt

בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שמות יג), וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר, בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה ה’ לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם

In each and every generation a person must view himself as though he personally left Egypt, as it is stated: “And you shall tell your child on that day, saying: It is because of this which HaShem did for me when I came forth out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:8) – Mishnah Pesakhim 10

On Shabbat HaGadol we are standing at the edge of the desert, about to leave Egypt. At this moment, all we know is what we are leaving: a form of slavery. There are too many ways in which we escape the meaning of this moment. By imaging the future we avoid thinking about the present; by worrying and planning we distract ourselves. But this is not the mitzvah.

The mitzvah – the religious obligation – is to immerse ourselves in the transitional moment of leaving Egypt. In ancient Israel the threshhold is a highly significant place, and in Jewish law it is an important border between two different realities that is nevertheless difficult to define. The very first subject of the Talmud is to define when day turns to night, and it takes pages and pages to consider. Our ancestors put amulets in the doorway to guard our going out and our coming in; we echo that act with every mezuzah we affix. 

If change is difficult, the first step into change is momentous. Most of us avoid it by any means possible. You don’t leave the bad situation, you try again – because as it is said, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know”.

It is an evil that we have come to see as acceptable; this is what the divine urge is always  prompting us to leave behind. In any form of slavery, external control is key; one is subordinate to a structure, not of one’s choosing, but which comes to dominate every aspect of one’s life. To leave it is to leave one’s life, as one knows it; in a way, to die and be reborn. Perhaps this is why we tell the story in spring. 

We do have some potential comfort: we can choose to take this step together. We can hold each other’s hands and face the wilderness. For the length of our history we have found some comfort in that possibility, even as we have faced all kinds of unknowns. The problem is that some of us keep trying to go back to Egypt, and pulling the rest of us with them.

וַיֹּאמְר֖וּ אִ֣ישׁ אֶל־אָחִ֑יו נִתְּנָ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ וְנָשׁ֥וּבָה מִצְרָֽיְמָה

And they said to one another, “Let us head back for Egypt.” (Numbers 14.)

Because it’s not all singing and dancing in joy after crossing the Sea and eluding certain death. There is terror in the unknown and undefined reality that will be confronted when we take that first step past the threshhold of the known. It’s why a toddler wants to bring a favorite toy on the first day of school; why good luck charms and good luck rhythms mean so much to us; and it’s why the golden calf was created.

What are we to imagine, in the thought of ourselves literally leaving Egypt, if not that we are – we too, we are also always – constantly on the precipice of the unknown, and therefore, can we understand that we are constantly at risk of creating a golden calf. The little golden bull is easy to laugh at when we encounter the story, but we should be sobered up when we remember that thousands of our people killed, or were killed, by our own people as a result.

What could possibly make us seek to kill each other? What could cause us to destroy our own community, and in so doing, our only strength and support in the wilderness? The golden calf incident seems a form of delusion safely far away from us, but let’s consider the question from the other direction: if it makes us kill each other, it reeks of idolatry. 

Idolatry, then, is the constant threat confronting us in the territory of the unknown. This is not a past nor settled problem; this is the constant challenge, in every generation. Idolatry cannot be defined by its artifacts, but by its effects. It causes the sundering of community. It abrogates all that we live by (“do not murder” for example, in the original case). This is the path back to Egypt, which we are commanded never to take.

וְלֹֽא־יָשִׁ֤יב אֶת־הָעָם֙ מִצְרַ֔יְמָה… ה֙’ אָמַ֣ר לָכֶ֔ם לֹ֣א תֹסִפ֗וּן לָשׁ֛וּב בַּדֶּ֥רֶךְ הַזֶּ֖ה עֽוֹד

HaShem has warned you, “You must not go back that way [to Egypt] again.” (Deut. 17.16)

A traumatized people may understandably, inevitably, make an idol of certainty to cling to. We make an idol out of halakhah when we take our perfectly functional mitzvah system and twist it out of recognition, creating insanely strict rules of kashrut or Jewish identity (intermarriage, gender expression, conversion) that destroy more than it nurtures. Today it is the modern State of Israel, more poignantly because for many secular Jews it has been the object of their worship for generations of disaffection from organized religious community. 

Alas, today it is the State of Israel which is our idolatry, our enslavement, our distraction from uncertainty, the bar by which we judge and even kill each other. This is the meaning of the death of Rachel Corrie in 2003. This is the reason for the killing of friendships, of communities, of belonging. This is the cause of the abrogation of every Jewish ethic in the occupation and oppression and persecution of Palestine.

Tellingly, when our ancestors recall the wandering in the wilderness they remember it as a time of blessing:

כֹּ֚ה אָמַ֣ר ה’ זָכַ֤רְתִּי לָךְ֙ חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ אַהֲבַ֖ת כְּלוּלֹתָ֑יִךְ לֶכְתֵּ֤ךְ אַֽחֲרַי֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר בְּאֶ֖רֶץ לֹ֥א זְרוּעָֽה׃ 

Thus said HaShem: I accounted to your favor the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride—how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. (Jeremiah 2.2)

On this Shabbat HaGadol, we are summoned to imagine ourselves leaving the slavery of certainty which is Egypt for the uncharted and uncertain future. We are challenged once again this year to follow love into the wilderness, to guard our steps with righteousness guided by the mitzvot that offer us a path toward tikkun – for ourselves and for our people. All we have to do is leave behind us everything that closes our hearts and makes us feel safe.

If it causes human suffering, it’s not the path of HaShem.

If it abrogates the mitzvot, it’s not Judaism.

If it closes the heart, it’s idolatry, and you’re still in Egypt.

Shabbat VaYikra: Calling It

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃ 

יהוה called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying (Lev. 1.1)

Vayikra is the first word of our parasha, and of the third book of the Torah, called Leviticus in English.  It comes after the customary gap in the Torah scroll of several blank lines which serve to separate book from book.  Suddenly, out of intertextual nothingness, vayikra – G*d calls to Moshe, and speaks. This is the first verse of the third book: ויקרא אל משה וידבר ה אליו Vayikra el-Moshe vayedabber HaShem eylav. 

This literally means, “he called to Moses, and HaShem spoke to him”.  Who is the one who called?  To “call”, it seems, is not necessarily to “speak”, or even, perhaps, to communicate.   Since the text refers to G*d in conjunction with the second verb, shall we assume, as translators do, that the first verb also refers to G*d?  How else might we interpret it?  Who, or what, called, and for what purpose?  

The verse uses two verbs: “called, and…spoke.”  In the creation account there is a similar pairing of verbs. In Genesis 1:3, G*d says “let there be light”:  vayomer Elohim yehi or. And then, in contrast, “G*d called the light ‘day’, vayikra elohim la’or yom”.  That which already is, is called, comes fully into being by the simple – and profound – act of naming it.  “G*d saw that the light was good…G*d called the light day” (Genesis 1.4-5).  The first earthling, the adam, reflects that power as it names all the animals in Genesis 2.5, using the same word, vayikra.  In both these instances, naming is the act of definition which gives a final reality to the creation:  the light’s creation is complete when it is called “day”, and the animals, too, are completed when they are called by their names.  

We, too, feel the need to be named in order to fully assert our existence. 

For Jewish tradition, to “call something by its name” is an act of empowerment.  So, perhaps, to give a name to one’s fear helps to control it.  Certainly, to give a name to one’s child, in Jewish tradition, is a loving and hopeful “wishing” of traits upon the child, a way to transmit values and express the depth of family ties.  To give a name is to give of oneself in the process; it is the first step toward entering into relationship with the named.

In our parashah, something is calling to Moses to name and thus bring fully into being that which is being born. The Israelites were in a chaos not dissimilar to that of creation; having left Egypt, we found ourselves in an undefined place and time. Now at the beginning of the book of VaYikra, the mishkan has been built, the covenant has been enacted, and in these two significant ways our ancestors bring order to the tohu vavohu, the unordered universe of their lives, just as G*d does at the very beginning of time. “Before every act of revelation,” our tradition teaches in a book of legends called Sifra, “G*d would call ‘Moses, Moses!’ as at the burning bush.  It was an expression of affection and of urgency.  And each time Moses would respond, ‘Here I am’.”

In these days of chaos and undefined reality, how are we being called? What is in need of being named? If we are living through a time of profound transition, what is being born?

Vayikra:  who, or what, is calling?  In a Torah scroll, the word vayikra is written with a smaller alef at the end; classic commentaries see in this a reflection of the humility of Moshe, who wrote the alef small as an expression of his own sense of unworthiness in the relationship with G*d.  

Humility is, of course, necessary if we are to stay aware of the nuances, the shadows and unrevealed corners of our unfolding reality. We are, certainly, a small alef compared to the Source of Life that we reflect.

How else might we interpret this small, shy alef?  Perhaps in the sense of the incompleteness of our understanding –  what might we “hear” as the voice of G*d calling us?  Most of us are not so lucky as to hear a voice from G*d clearly and distinctly telling us what path to take to solve our dilemmas and make the correct decisions.  Though we might harbor a sense of conviction on this or that ethical issue, most of the time these days we are far from any sense of light and clarity, of order, for our lives and our choices.

This small alef is, for us as well as Moses, a hint of the imperfect relationship we experience with our lives – with each other, with ourselves and with whatever we might call the greater whole of which we are a part. We are no where near occupying the full potential of our lives – but each of our lives is a promise of that potential. Each of us is a small part of the whole – yet a necessary part, even as the alef is a necessary part of spelling the word “call”. 

We are, each of us, a necessary part of naming the reality toward which we, as a kehillah kedoshah,  a holy community, walk. May we find our strength with each other as we go.

Shabbat VaYakhel-Pekudey:

“‘Where is the dwelling of G*d?’ This is the question with which the Rabbi of Kotzk surprised a number of learned scholars who happened to be visiting him.

They laughed at him: ‘What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of G*d’s glory?’

Then he answered his own question: ‘G*d dwells wherever we let G*d in’ (Martin Buber, The Way of Man according to the Teachings of Hasidism)

On this Shabbat we immerse ourselves in parashat VaYakhel-Pekudey, a double parashah that preserves a long and carefully detailed description of the building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary space created for HaShem. The Torah records HaShem commanding that it be done in order to accommodate the Divine among us.

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם

And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25.8)

Yet does a human-made structure really have the capacity to contain the Divine? The Book of Isaiah mocks the very thought:

כֹּ֚ה אָמַ֣ר יְהֹוָ֔ה הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם כִּסְאִ֔י וְהָאָ֖רֶץ הֲדֹ֣ם רַגְלָ֑י אֵי־זֶ֥ה בַ֙יִת֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּבְנוּ־לִ֔י וְאֵי־זֶ֥ה מָק֖וֹם מְנוּחָתִֽי׃ 

Thus said HaShem: heaven is My throne, earth is My footstool: Where could you build a house for Me, what place could serve as My abode?  (Isaiah 66.1)

These two verses stand at opposite ends of the tension inherent in Jewish theology: we have a sense of the holy being part of us, close to us, with us, but also of a vastness and awe that cannot be contained – what Rudolf Otto called in his 1917 study The Idea of the Holy a sense of mysterium tremendum, which he found equally potential in all living spiritual settings.

Ever since the Golden Calf, our people has been aware that we need a physical something to focus upon when we seek the holy which is both within and beyond us, and our connection to it. Our tradition preserves the sense that it’s not the building itself, though. After all, HaShem’s first holy space among us is a glorified tent.

So what’s with all the bricks and mortar? The soaring spaces and sprawling edifices? Partly, erecting impressive buildings make the people who build them feel impressive. But – and for us Jews this is a real caveat – one of the most impressive synagogue structure types was created for defensive purposes. More than one of the surviving shuls of Eastern Europe looks like a castle. During dangerous times, when the cossacks, or some other evil of the moment, threatened, the Jews would barricade themselves inside shuls that were massive, solid, and impenetrable (often enough, the rest of the village would come along with them!).

Today too many big, strong, impressive buildings – shuls, churches, business centers and community halls – have outlasted their people, for, as we know, no edifice, no matter how impressive, can withstand the larger social forces that either fill it with life or empty it of hope. 

No building can be made completely safe. Whether a tent in the wilderness or the great Temple in Jerusalem, we know well that they can all be destroyed.  May what we choose to do with and within our buildings be worthy of our presence there, and may our presence there together lift us, with the help of the divine within and beyond us, past our fears of all that we cannot control, toward the joy of sharing what we can: our love, our hope, our hearts.