parashat Tazria-Metzora: Jews At Our Best Are Women

The opening of this week’s double parashat hashavua, linking Tazria and Metzora, begins with a passage which is often understood as negative, even misogynist. A woman giving birth goes into seclusion: “she shall be impure” for a time, and then her period of “blood purification” will continue for thirty-three days upon the birth of a boy, and sixty-six upon a girl’s birth. Why twice the amount of time for a girl? What’s all this about being impure anyway?
 
It’s not the first time that our Western approach and its assumptions may make it difficult to consider other possibilities. But when we look carefully at the text, other interpretations offer themselves for consideration. And they are not just modern, liberal interpretations. 
 
First, one must look closely at the text. The parashah begins with the words: Ishah ki tazria v’yaldah zakhar, “A woman who conceives and gives birth to a male child” (VaYikra, Leviticus, 12:2). 
 
There is a challenge to our understanding here, since the word tazria actually means “she gives seed” (a verb you might think is applicable only to a man!). In classic Jewish commentary it is not dreamed of, that we might suggest that the Torah’s words are wrong, or that there could be a “typo” in the ancient scriptures. The most traditional of commentaries cannot avoid the plain sense of the text; it must be recognized. It says that a woman “gives seed”. What does that mean?
 
The Talmud, the ancient source and inspiration of all Jewish law, suggests: “If the woman gives seed first, she gives birth to a male; if the man gives seed first, she gives birth to a female.” (Talmud, Niddah 31a).
 
Now, never mind the questionable knowledge of biology: note the assumption of an absolute parity of roles. For our ancestors, there was no reason not to draw the conclusion that women and men are equally significant in their reproductive roles. This does not mean that the roles are similar, they are different: only a woman can give birth. And often, although women are as important as men in every aspect of our lives, humans create hierarchies through the differences we observe. Somehow, sometimes (even though you might think that a life-giving uterus would be a trump card!) women are seen as secondary in aspects of Jewish life, even handicapped.
 
But another commentary points out that, if you look at it another way, all Jews are women, in our relationship with G-d. The commentary Torah Or (“Torah is light”) asserts that “it is known that the community of Israel is called the ‘woman’ and G-d is called the ‘man’,”
 
…as it is written: “On that day, you shall call Me ‘husband'” (Hoshea 2:18). So just as in the case of a human man and woman, when “the woman gives seed first she give birth to a male,” so it is, by way of analogy, in the relationship between the community of Israel and G-d. When the “woman”–the community of Israel – “gives seed first first,” – when we produce an arousal below which only then evokes an arousal from Above, then the love that is born from this is a “male” offspring.
 
The “arousal from below” is when we, on our own initiative, “rouse” ourselves to do the mitzvot, without needing a “push” from G-d. This is a higher level of Jewish behavior, certainly more mature: the moment when we don’t wait to be told what to do, but ask ourselves “what is the mitzvah that needs doing here?” We cannot simply trust in G-d; we ourselves must sow the seeds of potential tikkun, healing, in the world. To be a woman in the eyes of G-d is to become our highest spiritual selves.
 
But what is a “male” offspring? The word for “male” in Hebrew is zakhar (back to our Torah verse here); but the word zakhar can also mean “memory”. Consider the possibility of this interpretation: that it is when we take the initiative and take the first step toward mitzvot  ourselves, that we draw near to that which we must remember. Remember that you are created in the Divine Image, remember that you stood at Sinai, and remember that each of us is equally valuable, equally necessary, in the work of all we are commanded by our masoret, the tradition of Israel. First among equals in our traditional obligations is zakhor – remember.
 
And it is only when the Jew acts as a woman in the sight of G-d that are we able to engender that “male offspring”. Both are necessary, and there must be an equal place for both. But we are not the same – Thank G-d, Creator of many diverse creations. 

parashat Shemini: Tragedy

In parashat Shemini, the Jewish world’s Torah reading for this week, the long process of building the first Jewish sanctuary – the mishkan – is completed, the priests – Aaron and his four sons – are ordained, the mishkan is dedicated, and the first sacrifices are finally being brought. The Israelites are thrilled to see the work of the entire community brought to a gratifyingly successful conclusion.
 
Then, inexplicably, in the middle of the celebration of the awesome Presence of G-d, two of Aaron’s sons are killed. 
 
Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense on it,
and offered strange fire before G-d, which had not been commanded.
And fire went out from G-d and devoured them, and they died there before G-d. (Lev.10.1-2)
 
They had just started out as consecrated kohanim, they had just started to serve – the purpose of their lives had just begun. The Israelites are horrified, and Aaron is silent, distraught. And we are left trying to make sense of it.
 
As usual in human situations, some of us look to blame Nadav and Avihu: they must have done something wrong, they must have deserved it. One commentary seeks meaning in the juxtaposition of a nearby prohibition against drinking wine while serving as a kohen, just a few verses later (Lev. 10.9). The two must have been drunk. Another interpreter argues that the text does not indicate that they “consulted with each other – as it is written, each with his own fire-pan – each acted on his own, individually.” (Vayikra Rabbah 20). Therefore, the transgression was in acting without coordination, perhaps, or without communication, or simply on personal initiative, without being commanded.
 
But there are other interpretations, such as in the ancient midrashic collection called Sifra: “In their joy, as soon as they saw the new fire, stood forth to heap love onto their love”. They came too close to the fiery Presence of G-d out of a desire to be that close. Jewish mysticism is full of a similar longing, and informed by a similar knowledge that to come too close is dangerous. That is why attempting a mystical experience, or even studying the mystical texts, is traditionally forbidden except to one who has a mature, deeply knowledgeable and thoughtful understanding of Jewish teachings and practice.
 
Yet, for some, there is a longing for that experience; it is so attractive, and can be so dangerous. Perhaps it is what some feel when hiking to the top of a remote and forbidding cliff; others love to sail the open ocean in a small boat, and feel most at one with the world there. 
 
The Sages of our tradition urged us to seek out that fire, if we must, carefully; to learn to be satisfied with a careful distance from it, and to protect ourselves with study, and with teachers, if we would come into proximity with it. I have more than once been asked by someone facing an unanswerable tragedy, “what shall I do now?” The best answer our tradition can offer is “more study – more Torah, more thoughtfulness, and more companionship in the struggle to face that which will remain an inexplicable mystery to us.
 
May we bring this lesson from Nadav and Avihu into our lives: keep your wits about you, don’t try this alone, and know that the highest and deepest love requires the greatest of care.
 

The Shabbat of Hol HaMo’ed Pesakh: The Door is Still Open

The parashat hashavua for this Shabbat depends on which day of Pesakh we are in. This year, since Pesakh began on Monday night, we are deep into the hol hamo’ed part ofPesakh, the “normal” part of the Festival of our Freedom (and our Matzah). “Normal”, in this context, means neither the first two days nor the last day of the Festival, which are not normal – they are shabbat, days on which Jews traditionally did nothing but rest and pray and study, just as on our seventh-day Shabbat. (Too bad that custom has faded in our Western capitalist world, where we all have to go to work. Funny that Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, with much less of a Torah-presence, have taken the place of Pesakh, Shavuot and Sukkot in our prominence of practice).
 
There is a special holiday reading which takes the place of the regular weekly parashah, and that reading changes depending on whether it’s the beginning/end of Pesakh or the middle, the “normal” days when there are no Shabbat restrictions, while still observing the Pesakh rules (there’s that matzah again). For this particular year, the reading is Exodus 33.12-34.26, and includes a special second reading, Numbers 28.19-25. 
 
The first reading reprises parashat Ki Tisa, focusing upon the process of forgiveness after our betrayal of the Covenant (so quickly our commitment was broken!) with the building of the Golden Bull. Moshe begs God not to destroy us, nor to abandon us in the midst of the wilderness.
 
The second reading reviews the sacrifice that was once brought in honor of the Pesakh Festival – continuing a millennia-old tradition that maintains our memory of who we used to be, even though we do not seek to return to that aspect of our past.
 
Taken together, the two readings might be said to express the difficulties of wandering, and the dead ends we encounter on the way. Religion is not a perfect practice with assured truth always available; religion is a messy process of struggling with our human confusion, within the constantly humbling realization that we don’t know what we’re talking about half the time (or more).
 
We are out of Egypt, but Egypt is not out of us. In every generation we are commanded to believe – not to cynically dismiss, but to believe – that we are going out of Egypt, that it is possible, that we have done it and now must live differently. We are to believe that a door of hope is still open.
 
The political philosopher Michael Walzer writes* “so pharaonic oppression, Sinai, and Canaan are still with us, powerful memories shaping our perceptions of the political world. The ‘door of hope’ is still open; things are not what they might be…We still believe…what the Exodus first taught…-first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; – second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; -and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.” 
 
According to the traditional count of days, we aren’t even at the splitting of the Sea yet. Patience and determination – and belief – will help us through all this wilderness, away from where we are, toward where we might be. We, as a holy community, helping each other, moving forward together toward that vision of a door – a threshhold, beyond which we might hope not to come back this way again, because we’ve finally seen a distant hint of that “better place”.
 
shabbat shalom, and mo’adim l’simkha, may this appointed time be joyful for you.
 
_____________________________________________
*Exodus and Revolution, New York 1985, p. 149; with thanks to Rabbi Zvi Leshem who brought this citation to my attention.
 
 

Pesakh: You Must Remember This

The following is a teaching of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger (1847-1905), author of the Sefat Emet, a book of his insights into the parashat hashavua and also the Jewish holy days. This is an edited paraphrase of one of his Pesakh teachings:
 
Of Pesakh it says, “this day will be a remembrance for you” (Ex.12.14) and “so that you remember the day you came out of Egypt” (Deut.16.3), and “Keep the [holy days of] matzot” (Ex.12.17). Memory is a point within, one where there is no forgetfulness. It has to be “kept” i.e. guarded lest it flow into the place where forgetting occurs. That is why “keep” and “remember” are said in the same single utterance at Sinai.
Every Pesakh the Jew becomes like a newborn child again, just as we were when we came out of Egypt. The point of remembrance within us is renewed. That primal point within is like matzah, which is just the dough itself, simple, with no fermentation or expansion. On this holiday of matzot the inner point, simple, unchanging, pure, is renewed. We do the work of Pesakh when we fulfill the command “keep the [holy days of] matzot” by taking time to renew the point within, the point of memory. We ask questions of others who remember what we remember, what we need to remember in order to guard that inner flame that keeps and guards us, as we keep and guard it.
 
It is striking that in this teaching, it is very clear that human free will, and human agency, are vitally important to human wholeness. We are not meant to passively sit back and wait for Divine grace to shower down upon us, nor to spend all day praying for it. Abraham, the quintessential Jew, defines that identity by his act of moving forward into uncharted territory – purposeful movement toward meaning is itself part of the creation of that meaning. During Pesakh we are reminded that in order to become the Jewish People, the communal equivalent of Abraham’s journey had to be repeated. Once again we ventured forth, purposefully moving toward meaning, into an unknown future that we would summon by our own act of moving forward.
 
As it is said, nishmat adam ner Ad-nai, “the human soul is God’s candle”. As one Rabbinic commentary observed, it is as if God said to Abraham, “go, and light the way before Me.” As we move forward into the future, as we choose the acts that make our lives meaningful, we bring illumination not only to ourselves, but to God as well. We are partners in a Covenant that truly calls upon us to keep and guard the meaning of our people’s memories through our own actions – and the meaning of those memories will stand or fall upon our willingness to take on that responsibility.
 
May our acts bring the illumination of our memories to bless our shared future.
hag Pesakh sameakh v’kasher, may your Pesakh celebration be joyful and fit.

The Shabbat before Pesakh: a Big Deal

This Shabbat is called HaGadol (“The Great Shabbat”) because it is the last before Pesakh and there is so much to review and reinforce of the halakha of Pesakh. It is also the Shabbat on which we read parashat Tzav, “command”. In a neat little nutshell these two terms cover much ground.
 
gadol – the word means “big”, and also “important”. The most important thing we are doing on this Shabbat, as Jews study and pray and rest, is to think about the meaning of the Festival of Freedom just ahead of us on Monday evening. Pesakh is a Big, Important Deal: if you heard President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem, he described our holy day in terms I use too. Pesakh is the holiday which describes who we have been, and what we are.
 
tzav – “command”, from the word mitzvah, “commandment”. Jews are commanded to observe the Pesakh Seder, and further commanded to tell our children about it, so that in their turn they will be able to pass the story along to the next generation. There’s a real poignancy here; we are obligated as Jews to make sure our children know that they belong to a history, and therefore that they are not alone in the world; they have a home, and a people. 
 
I recently read a medical article that reported that children who know their family history handle life’s stresses and challenges better than those who do not know where they belong. The idea is that whether one’s family history is a positive arc or a difficult one does not matter. For a child to know that “in our family, grandmother came to this country with nothing, and her children managed to start a business, and their children were the first to go to college” is to present one kind of hopeful family pattern in which to find one’s own personal inherited strengths; for another child to know that “in our family, we’ve had ups and downs and we’ve had to struggle, and we’ve come to know the strength of determination” is just as empowering a message.
 
Getting the message of Pesakh across to our Jewish children is, then, vitally important to their sense of self, of security – and, in Jewish tradition, of home, and of belonging. How shall we effectively get that message across?
 
Eysh tamid tukad al hamizbe’akh, lo tikhbeh  – the sixth verse of this week’s parashah commands, “you shall keep a fire burning continually upon the altar; it shall not go out.” (Lev.6.6) It is said that, from the time that the altar in the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, the altar remains afire in our hearts – and our challenge is to keep that fire – of engagement, of enthusiasm, of meaningfulness – burning bright, always. With what shall we feed the fire?
 
Remember that fire ignites fire. We adults are obligated to nurture the fire in our own hearts if we hope to pass it on to the next generation that we are all helping, together, to raise up as Jews. Make your Seder interesting and fun for yourself, and the children will respond. Not magically or all at once, but they will register that this mysterious gathering really is a Big Deal.
 

The Meaning of Sacrifice

On this Shabbat we begin the Book VaYikra (in English, “Leviticus”, because the book is really an instruction manual for the Levites and Kohanim, priests). This book records for us the ancient ritual of sacrifices as they were offered to our G-d (other sacrifices offered in specifically different ways were offered to other gods). What are we, two thousand years after the last sacrifice was brought to the Jerusalem Temple, to do with these texts?

This too is Torah, and within it there will be something that we need to learn, if we are willing to look closely and in a spirit of thoughtfulness. If we come to the text feeling dismissive, prejudging it as clearly meaningless, it will be. Follow the lead of generations of Jews who determined to keep it relevant because it is a memory of our ancestors, our grandparents and great-grandparents. Look closely at the words, see if something does not intrigue you. And if you can’t find it for yourself, read the commentaries. 

 
One example: VaYikra Chapter 1, verse 1: If you look closely at the first word, VaYikra, which means “[G-d] called” you will see that the last letter of the word, an alef, is written much smaller than the rest of the letters. What can be learned from this small alef? The alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alef-bet, and it is also the first letter of the word ani, “I”. Insight: sometimes one must make oneself small, i.e. humble, in order to hear G-d’s call.
 
The most intriguing question brought forth by this material for me is to consider:

What is the importance of sacrifice? The sacrifices our ancestors made seem far from us, and they are difficult to understand or to justify in our own day. But the details are preserved so completely and so carefully, at such length, that we should be curious as to why. Human nature has not changed so very much in only a couple of thousand years. What made the sacrificial system so necessary, in their eyes, to their relationship with the universe, and with G-d? What essential human need is served by giving up something of great value? Remember that for them, bringing an offering from their flocks of sheep or goats was a real financial sacrifice. One theory is that they felt that this was the only way to bring the universe back into balance after the kind of cosmic skewing caused by sin.
 
How does your Jewishness inform your understanding of sacrifice? Is there anything in your religious observances that moves you to sacrifice something for a greater good? Are you able to see the idea of sacrifice as answering an essential human need? To ask it another way, what, in your experience, is an effective way of atoning, bringing the universe back into alignment, after you sin?
 
I know, it’s a long time from Yom Kippur, Rabbi, why are you talking about sin? It’s one of those words from which we can learn a great deal if we are willing to bring it out of the box of toxic words damaged by powerful individuals who have used profound religious teachings for venal, manipulative purposes. Sin is simply that which separates you from G-d. Atonement through sacrifice may be a very powerful way of bringing you back home.

parashat Ki Tisa/Parah 5773

The coincidence of reading parashat Ki Tisa and the special text for Shabbat Parah on the same Shabbat brings us, among other things, an embarrassment of cows.
 
The weekly parashah has brought us to the narrative of Moshe on the mountain with G-d, receiving the teaching that will serve as the document of the Covenant between G-d and the Israelites. Down below at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites are getting restless. Moshe has been gone so long, they complain to Aharon: “make us another god instead”. And Aharon, perhaps afraid of the crowd, perhaps to stall for time, commands the Israelites to bring him all their gold. (The women demur, and that is why Rosh Hodesh honors them, but that’s another story.) The men bring enough gold to shape a bull – small, but an ancient Canaanite image of power and fearsome strength. 
 
G-d is annoyed. Moshe is distraught. Aharon is apologetic. The Israelites are punished, and repent of their deed. All goes on, but no quite like before. This is scar tissue in the relationship that the Israelites are developing with G-d; as in a marriage, hurtful words and betrayals cannot be completely healed, even when a couple manages to go on together. Scars do remain. And for many long years of Jewish tradition, the people of Israel has always been a bit embarrassed to be reminded of this sin, committed so soon after we promised our faithful commitment to G-d.
 
So reading the Shabbat Parah reading feels like having our noses rubbed in it. The entire reading is about how to turn a young heifer into a potion for ritual cleansing (ashes of heifer, a bit of herbs, cedar wood, some tola’at shani, the usual stuff). Why is this the special reading for the third special Shabbat before Pesakh?
 
The special reading and the haftarah both speak of the need for spiritual cleansing after a tough time. According to Pesakh halakhah, one who is ritually unclean cannot participate in the Seder. So these readings come as we begin to prepare, to remind us of the need for spiritual preparation as well as menus, guests, and deciding on this year’s haggadah.
 
It’s no mistake that we read of both embarrassing sins and the way toward cleansing in the same Shabbat, then. Our tradition is always reminding us that the first step toward healing is recognizing that one needs it. The first step toward overcoming a mistake, or a sin, or some other terrible thing that you’ve done (or that has been done to you) is to recognize that you could use some spiritual refocusing, some refreshment – a way of turning over a new leaf, so to speak.
 
The month of Pesakh, which begins very soon, is the first month of the year on the Jewish calendar. A good time to throw out the old and bring in the new: in the pantry, as we clean out hametz, and in our lives, as we greet spring with the hope that the world, and we ourselves, will find a sense of renewal, of newness, of spiritual cleansing from the old baggage and pain.
 
It is a custom to go to the mikveh before Pesakh or any holy day. I recommend it to you sometime during the month of Nisan, as you prepare for the 14th of the month, at twilight, and the Seder.
 
The mikveh is, after all, as Rabbi Akiba said, the hope of Israel (the word in Hebrew, mikveh, is very similar to the word for hope, tikvah). Immerse yourself in hope; allow yourself to believe in spring; realize that mistakes and embarrassments can be overcome through gemilut hasadim, acts of loving kindness.
 

Shabbat Zakhor, parashat Tetzaveh, and Purim 5773

This Shabbat we read parashat Tetzaveh, and also mark one of the special Shabbatot of the months leading to Pesakh. The observance of Shabbat Zakhor, “Remember”, includes a special Torah reading describing the attack by the Amalekites on the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt, very early on in the journey. The Amalekites swooped down on the rear of the Israelite group, assaulting the vulnerable weaker and slower of the people Israel. The Torah records G-d’s command to Moshe to remember the event, and declares that the memory of Amalek will be wiped out.
One way in which this is understood is as a command to erase the behavior of Amalek from our own human interactions, to the extent that no one will remember any more that anyone ever took advantage of any one else’s weakness. If it is not remembered, it is as if it did not exist.
In Jewish tradition, memory is the key to existence; one’s life finds its meaning and its significance through the very fact that one is remembered. Children, therefore, are seen in Jewish tradition as carriers of the memory of their parents (one reason why many children are named after beloved departed family members). And it is often true that people are driven to make a “name” for themselves in some enduring way that will outlast them. It seems that one of our most urgent fears is that we might be forgotten – and that will mean that it was as if we never existed.
It is interesting, then, t consider what is not named in our parashah, and also in the Megillat Ester which we will read tomorrow evening at the end of Shabbat when Purim begins. Precisely on Shabbat Zakhor, “remember”, we read the only parashah in which Moshe is not mentioned in the entire Torah (outside, of course, of the Book Bereshit.) Moshe is not remembered in this parashah. Neither is God remembered, by Name, in the Megillah. 
It is easy to insist that Moshe’s fingerprints are all over the parashah anyway; we know he is there because he’s obviously implicit. And what about G-d in the Megillah? It is often pointed out that the word melekh, “king”, occurs so often that it is meant to indicate the King of Kings, not the Persian Emperor satirized throughout.  It is also noted that every time when Esther comes before the King to make her requests, Ahashverosh is not mentioned; it is the King before whom she pleads.
Often the most important word is the one that is not spoken, but is heard nevertheless; the word that we refrain from speaking, or that doesn’t even come to mind. On this Shabbat Zakhor take a moment to consider memory. Zeh Zikhri, “this is my remembering”, says G-d to Moshe at the burning bush, and gives Moshe a Name that we do not speak, but is heard nevertheless, especially in the silent place where Amalek used to be.

Parashat hashavuah: Terumah – Lift It Up

The parashat hashavua this week begins with a command: “Tell the Israelite people that when they take up an offering for Me; every person whose heart is moved to generosity can make that offering.” (Exodus 25.2) This begins the narrative of the building of the Mishkan, the sacred space in which the Israelite people would focus upon being in God’s Presence (Hebrew: Shekhinah).
 
True, many generations later we are used to the teaching that God’s presence may be found anywhere; but that does not keep us for needing special, sacred places ourselves – places that serve as agreed-upon meeting places for us to come together for no less than the purpose of experiencing theShekhinah, the close and intimate Presence of God. 
 
You who belong to a shul, or are considering joining one, might not have thought of your shul that way: as a place where you come to focus upon the experience of being immersed in God’s Presence. But if the place is devoid of that possibility, it may be beautiful, but it’s not a mishkan, a dwelling place for the Shekhinah;  conversely, the shabby rooms of our European shtetl dwelling ancestors were sometimes so full of that awareness that those who prayed there were able to rise above their everyday miseries because of the bliss of that awareness.
 
The parashah goes on to describe exactly how the Mishkan is to be built, in great detail. Facsimiles of this structure have been constructed on the web, in miniature, and – I’ve been told but have not seen – in full size, somewhere in the Negev. Gold, silver, copper, tapestries of rich fabric, woods of various kinds – but the most important detail is given us at the start: all must be built out of material which is terumah, translated in two ways: “separated”, and “lifted up”.
 
Separated (Rashi): Halakhah guides us to understand that out of all our regular possessions and resources we should separate the first and best out for God. This is also the idea behind the ma’aser, “tithe”, which our farmer ancestors were to bring of their crops. Until the appropriate tithes had been separated out and given appropriately, the rest of the crop was not kasher (literally, “fit”), and could not be eaten. That which is kosher, in other words, is that which reflects our own spiritual awareness of the blessing of a successful crop, or job, or project. It is not ours, not all ours – as the President put it in a sound bite that could not be savaged quite to death, “you didn’t build that”. None of us builds alone: we are part of a fantastic network of support, resources and factors beyond our control, and our response to our own successes should be humble gratitude, not the self-celebrating arrogance of believing that we have power.
 
Lifted up (Zohar, II): As the Jewish mystics intuited, everything in our existence is made of the same stuff. Everything has within it a spark of G-d; not only human beings but all of the material world – even gold, silver, copper, tapestries of rich fabric, and woods of various kinds. One should not overlook the holy potential of any object, much less any person. What makes the difference is, as the Torah indicates, the “heart moved to generosity”. The spark of holiness in any object is lifted up through the mindfulness of the one who makes the offering. That is true of the offering we make of our words and acts as well.
 
An offering made by rote, or with resentment, can never be part of a mishkan. 
No volunteer work undertaken for a shul done with anger, annoyance or the hope of being noticed will ever evoke the Shekhinah. 
But every offering made by one whose heart is moved to generosity, large or small, obvious or unmarked, lifts up the offering and its holy potential all the way to God’s Presence. 
This is the only way we make a mishkan, a shul, into a sacred space, and it is more beautiful by far than a gilded, ornate building created without true terumah.
 
May you see the beauty of your offering of volunteer activity, tzedakah, and committee work as a true terumah and the very sacred essence of the Mishkan, both inside and outside of organized Judaism.

parashat hashavua commentary: Bo

This week’s parashah begins with God’s command to Moshe to once again confront Pharaoh, the great ruler of Egypt who has repeatedly refused to agree to Moshe’s plea to let our people go. One of the strange aspects of the parashah begins with the phrase that gives the parashah its name: Bo, “come”. Why “come to Pharaoh” instead of the more logical “Go to Pharaoh”? And then, of course, we have what is considered by many commentators to be the most difficult part of the whole story: God says to Moshe “I have hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. 
 
The Eternal said to Moshe, Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart…(Ex.10.1)
 
How many plagues does it take to change a Pharaoh’s mind? There have been seven so far, and the language has changed along the way. At the beginning, it was Pharaoh who hardened his heart, refusing to agree; now it is God who hardens the king’s stubborn heart. Have the plagues had the opposite effect of that which was intended?
 
Only if you believe God is, or has ever been, a puppetmaster. Try a different theological possibility. “The Eternal” is not a personality; it is the infinite time and space in which our lives occur. We choose – sometimes feeling pushed and sometimes pushing back – we choose how we will use our small allotment of time and space, moving toward good or toward evil on mighty winds of time and sweeping currents of spatial movement. 
 
If you choose to do good, all the forces of the world will help you. 
If you choose to do evil, all the forces of the world will help you.
– a Talmudic teaching
 
The effects of Pharoah’s own choices over time took his choice out of his hands, given enough time. Consider the addict who is sure s/he can stop anytime – until the day when s/he discovers that s/he no longer has freedom of choice in the matter.
 
Now we can understand the true meaning of bo, “come” to Pharaoh. If we are to truly confront that which has shifted within us away from free choice, and overcome our own hardnesses of heart, we have to realize that there is no outer place to “go”. Rather we have to look inward, to “come” home to ourselves. No hardness of the heart can withstand the perspective of our true place in Eternity. Think of how all things seem different when confronted through the lens of mortality…..
 
On this Shabbat, take a moment to widen your perspective. What plagues have you become used to, with the passage of time? What choices could you take back, if your heart were to un-harden?