Shabbat BeHukotai: What Kind of G-d Does This?

In this final week of reading from the Book VaYikra (Leviticus), we are presented with a most unpleasant text, known as the Tokhekhah, “Rebuke”. The parashah has begun with a beautiful picture of the lovely life that we will enjoy if we follow G-d’s mitzvot:

“If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My Commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit….and you shall dwell securely in your land.” (Lev. 26.3)

That’s in the 1st third of the Torah reading. This being the second year of our Triennial Reading Cycle, we start with the consequences not of obedience but of rebellion. The terms are so very harsh that there is a natural recoil from the reading, and a minhag (traditional habit) has developed around it: no one wants the aliyot associated with it, since the content of the aliyah with which one is honored is rather superstitiously thought to have an impact on oneself, and the reader usually tries to chant or read through the verses involved as quickly as possible, in an undertone, for that same reason.

This approach is reminiscent of the way we often treat horrible news; by distancing ourselves, by looking away. And part of the way in which we distance ourselves is to create a sense of how unlikely it is that such a thing could be.

That is how we come to the typical modern Jewish response to these verses: “this is outrageous! what kind of G-d would threaten such horrible consequences for disobeying G-d’s laws, and who would be stupid enough to believe in such a horrible G-d?”

But when we substitute another word for this unacceptable religious term, behold: morality refracts quite obviously through the lens of scientific knowledge. Consider just one such example of a way of understanding the blessings and curses of Behukotai:

The laws of the Torah command respect for the earth and its natural processes if we are to expect reliably dependable sowing time and harvests. When we do not respect the earth and its needs, we are told that “the skies will be like iron…your strength shall be spent to  no purpose. The land will not yield its produce, nor the trees of the field their fruit.” (Lev. 26.19-20)

It is becoming clearer that among the curses brought about by climate change is a new scarcity of water in certain places, which has been suggested as the main reason for the long years of bitter and murderous civil unrest in Somalia (http://www.somwe.com/scarcity.html).

Other examples of short-sighted and immoral human activity which has caused terrible disasters may include the recent landslide in Oso Washington, which killed at least 41 people. A bill which would have restricted further development in areas suspected to be prone to landslides was recently killed in the Snohomish County legislature in favor of a less-comprehensive plan. Developers hailed the move. After all, what are the chances that such a catastrophic landslide could happen again? (http://www.governing.com/news/headlines/what-could-go-wrong.html)

We recoil from the thought that our actions may actually turn our skies to iron and our fertile fields to barren desert. But when we look clearly and soberly at this week’s parashah, and then look around us, do we not see that our choices bring us blessing or curse? And that the word G-d, here, is simply and profoundly a powerful human way to refer to that which cannot be bribed out of consequences, nor avoidance of cause and effect, nor distracted away from looking at what we have wrought, just because it is too painful to contemplate.

The laws of G-d are one way of understanding what can also be expressed as the moral law of the universe. In either case, the kind of G-d that does this is the kind of G-d of which we are an inescapable part. The power we wield as G-d’s hands in the world will destroy us in myriads of curses that kidnap children, drown teenagers, and destroy us all by toxic degrees – or that same power will lift us up into an exaltation of justice and kindness that will heal much and inspire more.

Shabbat Behar: Between the Peak and the Valley

mah inyan shemitta eytzel har Sinai?  This is the classic Jewish form of the question you might recognize as “what does that have to do with all the tea in China?” or “what’s Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba?”

“What does shemitta have to do with Mt. Sinai?”

This week’s parashat hashavua is named Behar, for “on the mountain”, i.e. Mt. Sinai. The first topic mentioned among the many mitzvot of this parashah is shemitta, a seven-year cycle of Shabbat rest for the agricultural land, the fruitfulness of which the ancient Israelites depend for their very lives. The shemitta command teaches that everything needs a Shabbat, not only the people and animals mentioned in the Shabbat mitzvah we repeat in our prayers every week on that day, but also the land itself.

Here we are, deep in the details of the Book called VaYikra (Leviticus), learning law after law, deriving social and personal ethics, hearing stories to illustrate the cost of transgression. In our minds, we’ve left the Sinai moment – that moment of thunder and awe and revelation – far behind. This is precisely what leads to the question: “what does shemitta have to do with Mt. Sinai?” Asking the question is a way of saying that there is no apparent connection between two issues or concepts raised by one’s interlocutor.

But shemitta has a lot to do with Sinai, in the way that real life does maintain a link to the rare special moments that we experience as different – as different from everyday life, one might say, as the valley is from the peak. We live our lives in the valley of every day life, not on the mountaintop. Yet we would not know one from the other without the balance of both in our lives.

The same is true of Torah: elevating, beautiful commandments like love your neighbor as yourself, and difficult aspects such as the seeming acceptance of human conditions that we find barbaric. One of them, slavery, is legislated in this parashah. Why, we ask from our liberated place in the world, does Torah not simply abolish slavery?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers an explanation based upon the difference between chronological (Torah) and logical (philosophy) understandings of life:

There are profound differences between philosophy and Judaism, and one of these lies in their respective understandings of time. For Plato and his heirs, philosophy is about the truth that is timeless (or, for Hegel and Marx, about “historical inevitability”). Judaism is about truths (like human freedom) that are realized in and through time. That is the difference between what I call the logical and chronological imaginations. The logical imagination yields truth as system. The chronological imagination yields truth as story (a story is a sequence of events extended through time). Revolutions based on philosophical systems fail—because change in human affairs takes time, and philosophy is incapable of understanding the human dimension of time. The inevitable result is that (in Rousseau’s famous phrase) they “force men to be free”—a contradiction in terms, and the reality of life under Soviet Communism. Revolutions based on Tanach succeed, because they go with the grain of human nature, recognizing that it takes time for people to change. The Torah did not abolish slavery, but it set in motion a process that would lead people to come of their own accord to the conclusion that it was wrong. (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; to see the full article, click here.)

The Torah’s truth unfolds like a flower, which means that our own interpretations and understandings are as significant for our age as those in the ages that came before us. We often live in the breach, rather than in the fulfillment, of a mitzvah; truth takes time and experience in balancing the peaks and valleys of real, flawed human existence. The Jewish understanding of truth grows, embracing more and more seeming paradoxes until we reach a point where we can see that there are no paradoxes; there is only multi-layered, ever shifting, always limited human perspective.

What is not clear today beckons us onward, as long as we remember that we do not see things as they are, but as we are. And so we must continue to learn, and grow, so that we can see. Everything teaches of chronological truth, and everything connects to everything else – even shemitta at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

Shabbat Emor: Acting Our Age

In parashat Emor, the first words describe G-d speaking to Moshe – not unusual. But then G-d goes on to tell Moshe to speak to Aharon, who in turn is to instruct the priests, his sons and their descendants.  The parashah later will turn to the rest of us, the b’nei Yisrael, often translated “children of Israel”. It is interesting to consider in what way we are children from the perspective of Leviticus. We might see in this wording a hint of the appropriate roles of priests, and also of children (and the adults who care for them).

This week’s parashah is full of rules – some only for priests, and most of them regarding priestly things such as proper ritual. In this week’s parashah as well as some others we’ve seen in this book of Leviticus (which means “of the priests”, after all), it’s clear that the priests must hold themselves to a different standard of conduct if they are to be effective priests.

The same is true for all of us when we occupy a role. When you call me Rabbi, I offer you all that comes with that identity; when you address your Doctor by her or his title, you are implicitly asking for all the knowledge, support and ability of the profession to be brought to bear for you. There is an expectation by both sides that we will act to that standard of conduct. One reason why we are so disappointed in clergy who are caught in immorality is that they have broken an implicit contract with us. They are supposed to behave as the priests in Leviticus are told to behave.

This is not class-ism; it is delegation of responsibility. The ancient Israelite farmer did not know, and probably was not interested in studying up on, the intricacies of proper sacrificial ritual, and expected the local village Levites to be there to consult, remind, and guide. Similarly, I don’t have the knowledge my Doctor has, nor do I wish to try to glean on the Internet what a professional health care provider has spent years or decades learning. That is knowledge I want to be able to access as I need it, and I want to be able to trust the implicit partnership.

It’s true of being a parent as well. Parents are, in a way, their children’s priests, as well as life coaches and health care guides. Parents are mature humans, who know many things about life that they must guide children toward learning. Children – who won’t even have fully functioning brains until they are 20! – are not adults; they have no interest in, nor are they physically capable of, making the right decisions for themselves about how to eat right, become moral agents, or stand before G-d. Expecting them to make the best choices for themselves when they are children in any of these areas is abdication of adult responsibility.

There’s a traditional blessing that parents may recite on the day when a child is called to the Torah as a bar or bat mitzvah: Barukh sheh-p’tarani m’ansho shel zeh, “Thank G-d that I am relieved of this one’s punishment”. It reminds us that until children reach the ages of ethical awareness, they are not held responsible for their behavior – it reflects on the their parent, as does the punishment for any sin they commit. Children can’t be held responsible for sin or mitzvah. They are still in Eden. We know the rocky path that leads beyond, and we have to step in, and offer guidance.

The priestly standard we must strive to maintain, all of us who are parents and teachers and role models for children, is a responsibility delegated to us simply by the place in which we find ourselves. To be part of a community of people who care for each other is to keep in mind that we are always being watched by those younger than us, as well as by adults who see us as knowledgeable (you’d be surprised by who thinks you know more than they do). It doesn’t mean we have to actually know more than a child does; by definition, maturity offers guidance to immaturity. Just like the ancient Israelite farmer, all we need to know is how to seek out knowledge. And just like the ancient Israelite priest, we are called upon to remember that we are not children ourselves, nor does it help them when we withhold our adult experience and guidance from them.

Shabbat Kedoshim: Looking Through the Fear

As this Shabbat approaches I am thinking a lot about the Jews of Ukraine, especially my friends of Kyiv Congregation HaTikvah, where I served as Rabbi in 1993-1994. The words of this week’s parashat hashavua will be read in Kyiv as in Paris as in New York as in Portland, Oregon. We all read the same Torah, but we come to it from many different places. We read it religiously every year; what that means is that we approach the text willing to grant in advance that there is some relevance that we will find in it.

Relevance is, however, relative.

This year, I am blessed to read parashat Kedoshim from a place of personal security; I am not worried about civil war breaking out around me. I am not concerned about my physical safety when I go out on the street, and I do not expect a knock at my door. From this safe place, you and I might explore the esoteric concept of kedushah – what does that word really mean in ancient Israelite context? We might devote some time to the question of why ritual and moral laws follow one another without apparent segue. And we might debate the relevance of the laws that seem most out of touch with our own sense of the sacred.

What does it mean to consider Kedoshim in Kyiv on this Shabbat, as the Jewish community wonders whether and how it might be used by both sides in the disintegration of civil society around them? What do esoteric concepts or curious questions mean when, in the midst of the fear of danger threatening oneself and one’s loved ones, one chooses to gather with one’s fellow Jews in a shul on this Shabbat in Kyiv, to study, or to pray?

l’havdil….

In the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira of Pieceszna (alav hashalom, may he rest in peace) continued to study Torah and to pray with his fellow Jews in the midst of the Nazi terror. On May 4 of 1940 he taught about our parashah. He noted that we are commanded in this parashah to be holy, and we are told “you shall fear your G-d, I am יהוה” (Lev. 19.14). The key is in knowing that Elohim, “G-d” is the Name associated with Judgment, and that יהוה is the Name associated with Mercy; and remembering that holiness is a command upon us all.

How are we to be holy? According to Jewish tradition, we evoke holiness when we are together. Jews have always gathered in the synagogue when feeling frightened or sad. That is where we know we will find our people, and thus find comfort. There we know that we will not be alone with our fear. Together we search the Torah for a sense of meaning, and together we support each other in our prayers. When fear makes it impossible for your mind to shape coherent thoughts, we have two books full of thoughts and words about life – Torah and siddur – that are likely to serve at least as a good starting point. And we are there for each other, with each other, as we struggle. Thus we become a holy community, a kehillah kedoshah.

And what shall we do with the fear? That, the Pieceszna Rebbe suggested, is a doorway through which we can help each other walk forward. The task of the Jew when confronted with fear is to look for G-d’s presence within it, even as when we are surrounded by darkness, we look for light. There is more than one kind of fear.

There is a fear of punishment which can be characterized as a “fear of G-d”, i.e. fear that something one has done will bring judgment down upon one. It’s the kind of impulse that makes us look for a reason why we are suffering, assuming that it must be our own fault.

But suffering can help one rise through the lower sense of fear of G-d to a higher understanding, an “exalted fear”. This kind of fear is better called awe, and its power allows us to face concerns about safety, about crisis and about war with an inner serenity. Not because bad things will not happen to one, for they might – but because even in the midst of suffering and fear, one still remembers that there is not only judgment in the world, but also, on a higher level, mercy, compassion, and love. To be in awe of G-d in the face of crisis is to remain human, and to be able to continue to act as a human being. Lower fear makes us withdraw from others and care only for ourselves; the higher fear of awe keeps us caring for each other – a holy community, no matter what.

“You must always long for a greater holiness, and indeed make a greater and greater effort even if you are already holy. You will then find that “I am יהוה your G-d” – that Elohim, Judgement, has already become יהיה, Mercy.” (Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury, 1939-1942, trans. J. Hershy Worch, p. 86).

We Jews of the West are seeking any way we can to reach out to care for our sisters and brothers in Ukraine. If only it were in our power to turn their frightening situation into one of mercy! May they know that they are not alone this Shabbat – may they find their strength in one another’s presence and its holiness, and in knowing that we are thinking of them, and praying for their safety and well-being, as well. As the Pieceszner taught, this is how we can understand the verse “you shall fear your G-d, I am יהוה”.

Don’t be afraid of fear, however it reaches you, no matter where you are; you must look through it until you find that beyond it, there is the Mercy of other hands to support you, and always there is HaTikvah – hope.

Shabbat hol hamo’ed Pesakh: What Does It Take To Make A Clean Break?

I believed that the Soviet Union was dead and gone; I even thought that war between the nations of Europe was a thing of the past. I was certain that people carrying giant placards depicting the face of Stalin in Red Square during political rallies in the past twenty years were hopelessly anachronistic. I was sure that the rise of a new generation would bury the bad old ways beyond reclaiming.

The news of the last few weeks has surprised me. The ghost of the Cold War and all its related horrors – racism, persecution of minorities, and trampling of individuality – is not dead. As William Faulkner famously said, “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.“

How long does it take to make a clean break with the past? When do you know that you will never go back to Egypt? As anyone knows who has ever made a big change in life, the one thing that crossing a barrier teaches you for sure is that once breached, most can be breached again. And maybe it’s a natural thing – it is, after all, the path one knows best, having followed it with one’s own will. Backsliding is a human norm – the most difficult of all our self-made prisons to escape.

The parashat hashavua for the middle of Pesakh is a special reading, out of our normal Torah reading cycle: Exodus 33.12-34.26, followed by Numbers 28.19-25. In the first reading we are reminded of our very first backsliding. Following the great Escape from Egypt, we crossed the Sea and committed ourselves utterly to a new and better way of living; and within three months of that great crossing, we crossed back over. We did not actually, physically return to Egypt, but we did in our hearts. We repudiated Moshe, we built a calf-god made of gold, and we killed those who tried to stop us.

It took a state of war, and a lot of suffering and death, to bring the Israelite people back to the path of commitment we had begun. Most of our own personal backsliding is less widely destructive, though it can be no less personally catastrophic. An addict once recovered goes back to the addiction; a woman freed of an abusive relationship returns; promises we’ve made to ourselves and others to live more meaningfully starting NOW recede into last week’s sunnier horizon.

On this Shabbat hol hamo’ed Pesakh, the outer world is crying out to us as loudly as possible with this message and this question: what does it take for you to make a clean break with the past and become your best self? And what is the cost – to yourself, to your community, to the world – if you do not?

Shabbat HaGadol Akharei Mot: Death in Spring

Here on the cusp of the new agricultural year, in the full blown glory of spring, we think of new life and renewal. Our spring holy day festival, Pesakh, is first of all a time to celebrate the new wheat, the baby lambs, and of course the return of grasses and flowers with the lengthening day.

It’s all the more shocking when death occurs at such a time, when we’re so focused on new life and all the future planning that goes with it. But this week’s parashah is about death, and its aftermath. Akharei Mot, “after the death”, refers to the unexpected sudden death of Nadav and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron who were killed accidentally during their first day on the job as priests in the newly-erected Mishkan, the holy space the Israelites created for the purpose of seeking G-d’s presence.

In truth, though, death is always unexpected, in a way, and always shocking. And in our surprise, we are frozen out of our normal activities, and, often, at a loss. Is this what happened to Aaron? He and four sons were all newly invested as priests, serving the Israelites by taking care of the sacrifices they brought. It was their job to keep the place clean and functional, to offer the sacrifices correctly and to keep the fire burning upon the altar. Through no fault of their own except perhaps for ignorance, two of them are now dead. There is no way to know why they are dead.

There is a prescribed response for when we hear about a death. We are to say barukh Dayan haEmet, “blessed is the True Judgment”. This is a statement of acceptance – that even as we accept life and love, we must accept death and loss. It is a statement of resignation, and, perhaps, of assent: I was happy to have to one, even at the cost of the other. Who among us would refuse to love, simply because life will end?

The High Priest, Aaron, brother of Moshe, has two things to teach us about death in his reaction to the death of his sons, both in the parashah in which they are killed, Shemini, and the parashat hashavua for this week, Akharei Mot.

The first is that after his sons were suddenly killed, we read vayidom Aharon, “And Aaron was silent.” (Leviticus 10.3). He did not have it within him to immediately say “I accept this”. There are times when we cannot utter the words right away, because we cannot yet feel them to be true. Aaron reacts honestly, as a father. He is not rebellious, he is just not there yet. This kind of loss will take time to absorb; in such a moment of shock the heart is numb. For him, in this moment, there is no sense of G-d’s presence to acknowledge.

The second lesson Aaron teaches in these moments is that his own personal loss of connection to G-d is his own business, and that he still has a job to do, and an important responsibility to the community. The disaster has happened while he is in the course of the ritual of blessing the Israelite community in G-d’s name. No matter his personal sadness, he must function for the sake of the people – and he does not let them down. He continues and concludes the sacred rituals, and only then does he take time for himself to grieve.

In our private extremities of experience, we may feel ourselves radically alone. Yet, just like Aaron, we are surrounded by, and part of, our community. Even when we are without words, we still belong to it, and it to us. Sometimes there are no words, and no sense of G-d, in the face of death – but there is still love, that gift of G-d that comes to us through the people whose lives we share, and which lifts us up out of darkness toward the light and renewal of spring.

Shabbat Metzora: Take a Breath Before You Commit

Ever since just before Purim we’ve been encountering a series of special Shabbatot which are meant to get our attention and focus us upon the fact that Pesakh is coming. There is much to do to greet the Festival appropriately: house cleaning, Seder planning, tzedakah giving…. there are so many details and such a rush (and sometimes, such family dynamics) that it might remind you of the preparation before a wedding day.

And that, of course, leads to a midrash offered by the Rabbi Leibele Eiger, a disciple of the Ishbitzer Rabbi (who wrote the popular Torah commentary Mei Shiloakh). He writes that this Shabbat, unlike last week and unlike next week, is not one of the Arba Parshiyot, the weeks of the special “four Parshas” that we read in the run-up to Pesakh.  This Shabbat has no special extra designation; it is Shabbat Metzora, a regular Torah reading. For that reason it is known as Shabbat Penuyah, the “open”, or “uncommitted” Shabbat.

Rabbi Eiger points out that the word penuyah can also be translated “turning”, and as “single woman”. In these grammatical nuances he weaves a vision of us as a woman turning away from a former life and toward the Covenant, even as the people of Israel turned toward G-d and at Sinai entered into the Covenant as a woman enters the huppah. G-d is our partner, goes the midrash, and we are meant to live in G-d’s presence in joy and unconditional love – and complete commitment.

But first we have to be ready, to prepare ourselves, to take the time to let the ritual mean what it can mean for us. And that is what this Shabbat, I suggest, might usefully offer us. Shabbat Penuyah, the “free” Shabbat, can be designated by us the Transition Shabbat: the pause before the Big Day, a necessary moment to breathe between the preparations and the ritual itself.

When I officiate at a wedding, I require of the couple that they write me a letter telling me why they are getting married to the person they love. They are not to write it far in advance, but during the week before the wedding, when they are the most hassled by the myriad details and family dynamics and things that go wrong. It provides a moment for a deeper thinking, and feeling, about what is about to happen to their lives.

Before this Pesakh, take time to experience the transition offered you: between winter and spring, between darkness and light, between bare trees and blossoms – what does it evoke in your own soul? what does it feed in your own spiritual experience? Check in with yourself, and figure out where you are standing. Only then can you turn, with your community, toward a deeper sense of G-d’s presence, and what it really means for you to be part of this Jewish people.

Shabbat Tazria 5774: Watch For Rot

Our parashat hashavua (“reading of the week”) is one of the more misunderstood of the entire Torah. It seems to be entirely too consumed with concern regarding the appearance of discolorations on a person’s skin or hair. The first verse of our reading this year, the third of the Triennial Cycle, begins:

When a man or a woman has a נגע upon the head or the beard….(Lev. 13.29) This is actually part of a much larger section on what is usually translated “leprosy” (no relation to Hansen’s disease) and is called in Hebrew tzara’at. The verses between Lev. 13.1 and Lev. 14.53 can be seen as a unit which follows a simple a-b-a-b pattern:

Tzara’at of a person, diagnosis

Tzara’at of a garment, diagnosis

Tzara’at of a person, declaring clean and atonement

Tzara’at of a house, diagnosis, cleansing, and atonement

In her book Leviticus as Literature, the anthropologist Mary Douglas proposes that this unit of Torah describes a “body-Temple microcosm”. The body and the Temple are seen as exact reflections of each other. Your body is a Temple, and the Temple is a body. Anything and everything which upsets the healthy stasis of one or the other is a very serious matter, because your individual body cannot be separated from the community’s body, nor from the Temple. We are all one – animate and inanimate.

Leviticus is not easy to read, but it contains hints way back to the most ancient Israelite religious beliefs and practices. Among them is this idea, no less true for us: no part of us can be allowed to decay or become infectious without damage to the rest of us. Mold, rot, fungus – whether physical or moral – must be watched for constantly, because when it spreads it damages all of us. It is interesting to note the physical-moral connection. Is it true that if we act immorally, our houses will also be affected? Is that not exactly the case when, for example, insufficient oversight of building contracts allows substandard buildings to be built that may then collapse?

The medieval Jewish scholar and physician Maimonides believed that moral rot would sooner or later show on the body. The underlying truth of that assertion shows up in myth and fairy tale (just think about how many bad guys physically corrode in death). This indicates some deeper truth that our rational intellects don’t want to, or can’t, handle; instead we take refuge in insisting that there are those who suffer who are innocent. That is true, but it is only a simple truth. There is a complex truth here. Our intellects can see the connection between moral and physical rot in the fabric of our communities, when we allow part of town to deteriorate, or when we underfund our schools and public services, or when innocent individuals suffer physical ailments such as tzara’at, whatever it was – and is. People downstream from chemicals may suffer physical ailments; that is not so difficult a moral connection to make. Someone dumped those chemicals.

We do not know every moral and physical connection in our world; we cannot understand every suffering. But the ancient truth cannot be so easily swept aside, especially when atonement is prescribed – that is to say, possible. The innocent suffer; what is our complicity? Where is the rot in our surroundings? How might we  atone for the civic, environmental, and political sins we have committed as a community, and clean up our act? We are, after all, all in this together.

Shabbat Zakhor and Purim 5774: Laugh It Off

Here comes Purim, the better to liven up the book of Leviticus! Our parashah for this week is Tzav, “command”, in the imperative form of the word, no less. And yet Torah comes first; Purim begins at the close of Shabbat, tomorrow.

 

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Zakhor; it always precedes Purim (this year not by much). It reminds us to forget. And this is only the first of the curious inversions of the Purim holiday period:

 

1. We are commanded in the special extra Torah reading for this Shabbat to “remember to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Deut.25.19)

2. We are commanded in the regular reading of the parashat hashavua to light a fire an eternal flame: “fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continuously; it shall not go out.” (Lev. 6.6)

3. We are commanded by the mitzvot of the holy day of Purim to laugh at the terrifying story of a powerful tyrant who held a lottery to decide the best day to massacre the Jewish people of his land. We are commanded to laugh, one might say, in fear, or in fury, or in defiance.

 

Purim invites us to turn our expectations upside down and to take lightly our own most sober conventions; it is more of a surprise to discover the same invitation to inversion coded in the Book of Leviticus, a seemingly mind-numbing recording of the minutiae of priestly sacrificial work. Yet the religious anthropologist Mary Douglas alerts us to just this astonishing fact. Hidden in the literary style of Leviticus is a great work of art: rings upon rings of echoes, parallels upon parallels of concepts and words. Here’s an example just right for this time of year, as we prepare for the great Festival of the Exodus from Egypt:

 

The Bible is sprinkled with famous puns, and Leviticus is no exception. For example, two distinct verbs are used in the Bible to refer to G-d’s bringing the Israelites out of Egypt: the commonest is literal “to bring out”, the rarer one, only used in Leviticus 11.45, is literally “to bring up“. In Hebrew the same word means “to regurgitate”. In this one rare case the verb for the L-rd’s saving action is the same as that used for “bringing up the cud”, one of the criteria of a clean animal. By this device the whole of chapter 11 is bracketed between the opening law that says the only animals to be used as food are ruminants which bring up the cud and the concluding passage, “I am the L-rd your G-d who brought you up [regurgitated you] from Egypt.” (Mary Douglas, Leviticus As Literature: 49)

 

Laughter is a curious thing. Aristotle posited that when a baby laughed for the first time, it became a human being, with a human soul. Something about laughter lifts us up above the animal kingdom, perhaps – and certainly lifts us out of victimization. Laughter fits us Jews very well, after all – we perfected the art of laughing through tears in modern comedy, even as we suffered persecution and discrimination. On this Shabbat and, upon its heels, Purim, let’s take the message to heart: some things, like Amalek, are best forgotten in laughter. Some things, like keeping an eternal fire – or any other important purpose – burning, can’t be taken too seriously if we are to succeed.

Shabbat Shekalim: Tax Time in Ancient Israel

half-shekel
half-shekel

This Shabbat, on which we are reading Pekudei as the parashat hashavua, is also known as Shabbat Shekalim. Yes, the Shabbat of the Shekels. This special Shabbat is not necessarily tied to the parashah called Pekudei, but it’s not entirely inappropriate, since this last reading in Exodus consists of an audit of the records (in Hebrew, “records” is pekudim) as well as the account of, finally, the erection of the Mishkan, the space the Israelites are constructing in order to have a designated place for their kavanah (spiritual intention). Thus the place is called the place to meet G-d, although everyone agrees that no one space contains the holy.

This Shabbat is called Shekalim because it is the first of four special Shabbatot that focus on the upcoming Festival of Pesakh. Shabbat Shekalim always occurs on the Shabbat before Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the month of) Adar (or Adar II in leap years such as this year). On this Shabbat, a special extra reading is added to the regular Torah readings for Pekudei. The extra (maftir) reading comes from a text earlier in Exodus which describes a half-shekel tax collected from all the Israelites. It is read on this Shabbat because the tax, which became a yearly tax in later Israelite history, was due on the first of the New Year, which begins with Rosh Hodesh Nisan.

This raises some interesting questions which shed light on our ancestors’ culture and social organization.

1. What was the original purpose of the tax? It was a way of conducting a census. Since it was believed that counting the people was bad luck and had been demonstrated in the Torah to bring on a plague, there was – and still is – a reluctance (call it a superstition) to count people. Even in a traditional shul today, one does not count people when checking to see if we’ve reached the minyan number of ten; rather, a gabbai might use a verse such as Psalms 5.8.

 וַאֲנִי–בְּרֹב חַסְדְּךָ, אָבוֹא בֵיתֶךָ;    אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶה אֶל-הֵיכַל-קָדְשְׁךָ, בְּיִרְאָתֶךָ.

As for me, I come into Your house filled with the joy of Your Presence; I bow in awe of the holiness of your Plac e.

2. Why use a Shabbat as a reminder that tax time is coming? It is striking, after all, in a religious tradition that shuns money on Shabbat and holy days, to consider the prominent place of  money in this Shabbat’s theme. In the ancient past, and continuing right up until the last generation or so, Shabbat was the weekly gathering time of the Jewish community, and the shul was the equivalent of the public square. If you wanted to reach the most Jews with the important announcements of community news, the way to do it was to incorporate it into the Shabbat prayer ritual. The Rabbis of the Talmudic period, who devised the intricate plan of what to read when all year long, mandated certain Torah and Haftarah readings which emphasized aspects of the community. Sometimes the special Shabbat reading brought depth of meaning to the day itself, and sometimes it served, as well, as a reminder of something important coming up. In the same way that we read three haftarot of gathering doom before Tisha B’Av (when the Temple and Jerusalem itself were destroyed, and we went into exile), we – on a happier note – have special readings that recall and add to the excitement of the upcoming Festival of the Spring Harvest, the Festival of Matzah.It’s quite convenient that this verse is part of the first song we sing upon beginning our prayers, so that while you are singing, you can simply let your eyes rest on each person as you chant each word of the verse. You are not precisely counting the people, yet you know if you’ve got your minyan. (Another way to count people is to point to each one and say “not one”, “not two”…..)

3. Why a half-shekel apiece? isn’t that a regressive sort of flat tax?  There are other taxes that are tied to one’s income; this small contribution has a more symbolic value, that of reminding us that this Temple tax asserts that we are all equal before G-d. Further, the application of this tax to all of us demonstrates our belief that each of us has an equally valuable contribution to make to our congregation.

“The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less; it is an atonement for your souls.” (Exodus 30.15)

The last phrase of the mitzvah (the obligation commanded here) is the most provocative, describing the tax as an “atonement”. It is easy to see, and assert, that no one is too poor to give, and to understand why the rich are not allowed to give more, but why is the giving an atonement? Perhaps because each of us needs to atone for either feeling sorry for ourselves that we don’t have more, or looking down on others who don’t have as much as we do. In the act of giving the very same thing, each one of us and all together, we are invited to atone, which is to say, to return to a place of at-one-ment with each other.

Our Mishkan, our sacred space, exists because of the support of each one of us, and that support is equally valuable, equally necessary. The offerings of our hearts, minds and wherewithall are all needed if we are to fulfill the mitzvah “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might”, from the Shema.