Preparing for Shabbat

D'var Torah given this Monday at HUC. 

I love running on Friday morning. The run feels great and it’s time I don’t have during the week. Then, I return home to make challah and prepare my part of Shabbat dinner, spending time in the kitchen, spilling flour and tomato sauce, getting even more gross as I go through the day. Of course, I make time for homework, but the Shabbat preparations really take up most of my day. With only minutes before candle-lighting, I finally shower and change my clothes. As I step out of my dirty clothes and into the shower I feel a sense of calm. And as I don my Shabbat outfit, I feel enveloped in calm.

We all feel this need to change out clothes sometimes. We wear a different outfit everyday, sometimes multiple outfits a day. We change for special occasions. The Torah also understands that people need to change their clothes for special occasions.

In Leviticus 6:4 we read: וּפָשַׁט, אֶת-בְּגָדָיו, וְלָבַשׁ, בְּגָדִים אֲחֵרִים; וְהוֹצִיא אֶת-הַדֶּשֶׁן אֶל-מִחוּץ לַמַּחֲנֶה, אֶל-מָקוֹם טָהוֹר. He took off his clothes and put on new clothes. He took the ashes to outside the camp, to a pure place. For greater context, this verse is prefaced by the High Priest, wearing his linen uniform to move the ashes to the edge of the alter, changing his uniform, and then going out to perform the second duty as stated above. He changes in order to perform the second required duty associated with the ash of the עולה, the burnt offering.

Exodus 28:43 says that the high priest should only wear his priestly garments in the area of the sanctuary. This makes sense. Yet the Rabbis still had questions about the strange wardrobe change. Rashi and Ramban quoting Rashi, commented on it, saying אין זה חובה אלא דרך ארץ, this isn’t a requirement, but rather the right way to act. They determined that the High priest was not required to change his clothes. Instead, it was a suggestion to demonstrate proper intentions. There are two explanations for this. In one, the High Priest should not dirty his fine linen clothes in disposing of the ash, so he changes into older linen clothes. He still wears בגדי כהונה, priestly clothing, but he does not dirty the grandest ritual garb, saved for the most important of offerings.

The second explanation comes in the form of a parable. When a man makes wine for his master, he dirties his clothing in the process of making it. It would be disrespectful for the wine maker to serve his master in those dirty clothes. So too would disposing of the ash outside the camp in dirty clothes be disrespectful of God.

Both of these interpretations focus on cleanliness and respect for the ritual itself, as well as the master before whom it is offered, in this case, God. The Priest must demonstrate honor for God, and does so by way of a clothing change.

From these verses, we learn the importance of clothing changes in order to make rituals more meaningful and distinct. This is further demonstrated by the Maharasha, a commentator living in 16th/17th century Poland, on the Talmud, in Shabbat 114a, who talks specifically about women’s preparations for Shabbat. He suggests that Levit 6:4 particularly focuses on women who spend their entire Friday preparing the house and meals for Shabbat. These women work diligently to ensure a meaningful Shabbat experience, and likely get dirty,  their hair and clothing imbued with the smells of cooking. Especially these women, the Maharasha says, who may not even attend synagogue for Kabbalat Shabbat, should make sure to change their clothes. They too need to differentiate between the holy acts of preparations for Shabbat and the bringing in of Shabbat itself.

Although Leviticus 6:4 speaks about the high priest and the necessary actions he must take to fulfill his duties in the most holy and respectful way, the general concept of changing one’s clothes in order to demonstrate distinction is applicable in many realms. This change allows a mental and physical distance between the two events or times, even when we don’t specifically see it.

I find this distance most relevant as I move to welcome Shabbat, both physically and spiritually. I need to feel the distinction between Shabbat and the rest of the week, which I do through a clothing change.  Though the Rabbis tell us this clothing change isn’t imperative, we learn that it is “the right way to act.” Shabbat is a holy time and must be treated as such. Were we to enter Shabbat either unwashed or in unclean clothes, we would not be in the right spirit to welcome Shabbat. Rather, we must allow ourselves to be transformed.

This Shabbat, in whatever way you choose, I invite you to try something new. Try separating yourselves from your everyday and putt on something different, something meaningful. Try welcoming Shabbat with a sense of דרך ארץ.

And yes, I did go for a run. And I did get all dirty. But I also showered more than 1.5 hours before Shabbat!

Conversion in Commandments?

Friends,

Its been a while since I've last posted. Each Shabbat, we get a new Torah portion and new life experiences to lead us along, and they can sometimes get in the way of scheduled things. However, this week, parshat Mishpatim, finds me back with Congregation Beth Aaron in Billings, MT.

Throughout my week, almost all of my classes have discussed the Torah portion to some extent. Whether it was a midrash that touched on it, a prophet who is included in this week's Haftarah reading, or a d'var Torah that someone wrote specifically to relate the class to the parsha, each class has touched on Mishpatim; these laws and rules that are so essential to the foundation of the Jewish people.

Each one inspired me, but one has stuck with me. It is a metaphor for the larger picture of the Exodus, from the Exodus out of Egypt to the reception of these laws, to the fine tuning of these laws..

The first: This idea stems from a verse that occurs in multiple utterances throughout our Torah, found twice in this set of verses in Exodus 22:20 and 23:9. Reading, כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" this verse seems innocuous at best. So what? We were strangers, foreigners when we were slaves in Egypt and understand the trials and tribulations of what it means to be in a place that is not your own. Except my teacher had another explanation. What if, instead of telling us that we were strangers in Egypt, the Torah is trying to tell us something else? The word גר, ger, in English means stranger, but it can also mean convert. Maybe the Torah is demonstrating that we were converts in Egypt (and went through a reverse conversion through the process of leaving Egypt, which I will get to in a moment) and therefore understand what it is like to be a convert, to be someone who has taken on a foreign religion and attempted to wear it as a mantel while still connecting to the old religion in some way.

I'd like to argue that our conversion in Egypt, while living/working as slaves was a fake conversion. We, the Israelites, did so in order to convince Pharaoh that we weren't going to do anything to him, and therefore that we were relatively harmless. Even more, we were likely forced into it (later Jewish history, in the Middle Ages, understands that a forced conversion does not hold up after the oppressors leave), making it null after the fact.

However, because God decided to remember and re-establish (or establish for the first time-it depends) the covenant with the Israelites, they all needed to convert to the religion that God wanted them to follow: a monotheistic, rule-filled religion with God at the forefront. Having experienced slavery and the Pharaoh's religion (a practice with multiple god-like deities, each of which supposedly brought different blessings into a person's life) for 400+ years, the Israelites memory of their previous encounters with religion and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob may have ben non-existent. God needed to remind the people of what that entailed.

Therefore, instead of the book of Ruth being the first conversion story in our Bible, the story of the Exodus is a giant conversion story, where we go through the conversion process. There are three acts one must perform/undergo during the conversion process, to mark one's place among the Jewish people, being circumcision, mikveh (ritual bath), and standing before the Rabbi (and the community they choose to join). These three acts are all represented in the Exodus story.

The first, circumcision, can be seen in the Passover sacrifice of Exodus 12:6-7. It is a not a physical defilement of one's body, but the pascal lamb is an extension of the Israelite people, as this was one of a few meager possessions during slavery. They were asked to keep the lamb for 14 days, slaughter it, and then use the blood on the doorposts of their houses, so the angel of death passed over their houses. These acts, of both killing the lamb and rubbing the blood, demonstrated a physical action to show God the people are part of the covenant. Circumcision is exactly that.

Mikveh is a ritual occurance where one dunks him or herself fully into "living water" (water that is natural, flowing, and naturally fed) a number of times in order to be made ritually pure and ready to take on an obligation or commitment. For a person undergoing a conversion, it is a huge step in the transition into the Jewish community. It, along with the other two processes describes, is another way of demonstrating that one has decided to cast their lot with the people.

In our story, it is the crossing of the Red Sea that demonstrates Mikvah. Through the crossing, we immersed at some point and therefore came out on the other side, clean, free of the Egyptians and their army, and ready to take on God as our supreme being. Although not exactly how Mikveh works, this is more or less a good correlation.

The last step is coming before the Rabbi and answering a few key questions. After months of study, a person will often come before the Rabbi, before the ark, and answer a few questions about their commitment to Judaism and their commitment to this people. They finally proclaim, before their community, God, and all Israel, that this is the people to which they belong and that this is where they feel most compelled to commune. Right before the Israelites get the Ten Commandments, offered to us in Exodus 20:1-17, God asks if we will do them and we answer, נעשה ונשמע, we will do and we will hear. We are committing ourselves to following the commandments and doing as God asks. We are fulfilling the third part of these three actions.

The reason this is so pertinent here is that line that occurs twice here, talking about גרים, strangers or converts. As we experienced this process, we understand how meaningful, but how difficult it can be. Due to this, we cannot live in a bubble as a Jewish community. We as a people have undergone so much stress and disappointment over time. Our job, as a people, is to continue to maintain that communal identity while simultaneously reaching out to others around us. Whether converts or not, people who are strangers among us must be welcomed to learn. We were unsuspecting converts, coming upon Judaism because it was placed upon us. Our job, in today's world, is to help other people and groups understand us so that they might know what it means to be Jewish.

As a religion, we do not proselytize, which I appreciate. But we must accept and treat those among us, those who are converts, as equal members of our community, ready to do their share. Once someone chooses to cast his or her lost with us, they are part of the Jewish people for life. Our role is to welcome them with open arms.

Ken Yehi Ratzon.

Actively Stand Up

This week's sermon in Billings, MT on Martin Luther King, Moses, and anti-Semitism.

Martin Luther King Junior. Espoused as one of the greatest speakers of his time, a charismatic leader who led the fight for racial equality in America. Here in Billings, as in much of America, he symbolizes the need for recognition of different kinds of people, different ideology, religion and ways of life. He symbolizes hope, continuity, connection. Yet here, he also helps demonstrate the Not in Our Town attitude, the unwillingness to continue to let hatred of any sort, especially in the form of anti-Semitism, rule.

MLK Jr. spoke eloquently. Yet many leaders do not. In fact, our great Jewish leader, Moses himself, complains of being “heavy mouthed and heavy tongued.” (Exodus 4:10) He does not feel prepared to rise to the task of speaking to Pharaoh and helping bring the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt. In fact, when God asks Moses to go to Pharaoh, here is what he says:

Hebrew (Exodus 6:12). But Moses appealed before God, saying, ‘The Israelites would not listen to me, how then should Pharaoh heed me, a man of impeded/uncircumcised lips’.

Moses is so unsure of his ability to convince anyone to listen to him, not the entirety of this burdened people nor the great Pharaoh, that he tears himself down in front of God. Not heeding the call of God, he takes the easy way out, telling God he is not capable. Moses stands at an impasse: he can either go ahead and attempt to act, or he can remain frozen by fear and insecurity.

The events that transpired in Paris this past week come to mind. If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to suggest that we, as Jews in Billings, California, or even Israel, are at a turning point, like Moses.

A week and a half ago, a French satirical magazine, Charlie Hedbo published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammed. The next day, 12 people from the magazine (including one policeman) were dead at the hands of Islamic-extremists who felt that they were avenging the wrongful use and depiction of their prophet. What transpired were a series of police chases and disturbing circumstances, ending with a total of 17 people dead, including 4 of the 19 Jews held hostage by related extremists in a Paris Kosher supermarket.

These events were the result of Islamic extremists. They were acts of baseless hatred. Yet, they sparked fear into the hearts of the French public as well as people around the world. That was the intent of the terrorists: evoke fear and separate people. Make them distrust their neighbor. Yet, Jews everywhere started when they heard of these Paris hostages, of all the deaths. The news became personal, hitting too close to home. A Jew is a Jew, we care for our own. Yes, we care for people as a whole, but when our own people are attacked, it becomes much more personal.

Regardless of who dies, destroying the sanctity of life and taking any of God’s children is wrong. It is a desecration of God’s holy name. In fact, our tradition teaches that if one takes a life, it is as if one destroys an entire world. This sentiment speaks to us clearly at this time, after the events of the past week and a half, as well as during this particular MLK weekend. We must stand up and add more worlds to our own, not diminish the ones already in existence.

Exodus 2:23 reads Hebrew …and the children of Israel sighed because of their hard work and they cried out, and their cry for help came up to Adonai from/because of their work/bondage. God could not heed the call of the people until they cried out to God in pain (the pain of bondage). Not until the people actively expressed the misery they experienced as slaves could God act and try to deliver them from slavery.

God must hear our voice. We must make our voices heard. Not just in a single cry that then dies out and disappears, but a constant call, a constant disdain for pain and death so that God will continue to hear again and again. Then our voices will be heard. Then God will, like with the Israelites in Egypt, bring about change and help the people out of their current sorrow. We can help.

And in Egypt, God does. God hears our cry and decides to use Moses, the one who claims not to be able to speak, to help bring the people out. God pits Moses against Pharaoh, the great ruler of Egypt, who feels his actions are correct, that he must continue to enslave the Israelites, even when Moses pleads, even when he threatens the onset of plagues. Pharaoh’s heart is constantly hardened. Moses, of uncircumcised lips, attempts to bargain, plead, demand, beg for the freedom of the Israelites. The weakling against the giant.

However, Moses undergoes a change: from meek and unsure to a strong and determined leader. He does not have all the answers, nor does he know exactly where he should go. But he continues on. He fights. He demonstrates the necessity of acting and doing at a time when no one else is willing. He overcomes his own hesitancies and personal challenges, in order to act for the greater good. Moses is a beacon, like Martin Luther King Junior.

As all the fear and death that has plagued our world over the past week and a half settles in, we recognize the importance of acting, of not being afraid, of making our voices heard. We must demonstrate our disdain for the current circumstances the world is experiencing and take a stand. Then, God will hear our voice. We are a people of faith, but also one of action. We must let God hear our voice. But only if we too are willing to act and bring about the change. Only if we are willing to help our fellow man and stand by their side. We must take a stand, we must say “Not in Our Town.” We must say, “Not in our world!"

Zayde, Chanukkah, and Miketz

Tonight is the 4th night of Chanukkah. Having heard two nights ago that my grandfather, David Dalke, whom we all lovingly called Zayde, passed away, I was challenged by the idea of both celebrating Chanukkah and discussing these miracles, when I felt that his passing only brought sadness to my world. In some cases, that is true: he was a beautiful soul and I loved him dearly, but he was in pain, and now I know he has found respite. Yet I also recognize that he would want me to celebrate Chanukkah in the only way he knew how: loudly, proudly, and with a drink in hand (I think I’ll skip out on that last part).

This evening, as I stand (here) on the pulpit [in Billings, MT to lead Congregation Beth Aaron] in T’fillah (prayer) and song, accompanied by my mother (who was already planning to come in for the weekend), I will channel Zayde’s passion for Judaism. He loved it, even as he slept through Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, his long legs unfolded in the isle of B’nai Jehudah, being nudged awake by Bubbe when he started to snore. Music will hopefully resonate in the sanctuary and then voices in the social hall as this building fills up with joyous people and excitement for this festival of lights.

With all that, I am reminded of a verse from this week’s parsha, Parshat Miketz. A continuation of the Joseph story, beginning with Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams (and becoming Pharaoh’s second in command) and concluding with Joseph’s testing of his brothers. He wants to see that his brothers have changed and are not the same men who tricked him in last week’s installment. Joseph accuses them of being spies, keeps Simeon as collateral and sends the brothers back to bring Benjamin to Egypt. They finally bring him, only to have Benjamin accused of stealing Joseph’s goblet of power. And that’s where the parsha leaves off for the week.

However the verse that stands out is one of Jacob’s. Jacob, a curmudgeon who loves Joseph more than his brothers and then Benjamin as his replacement when Jacob is told of Joseph’s “death”, is reticent to send his new favorite son to Egypt lest he be killed as well and not return. Knowing that he has no choice, Jacob relents and begins by telling the brothers, “If it must be so, do this,” wherein he begins to lay out the plan for how the brothers are supposed to go and brings gifts to put them at the mercy of the Egyptians (Gen 43:11). Jacob concludes his explanation with some choice words: "k’asher shakhalti shakholti” if I am to be bereaved, I shall be bereaved (Gen 43:14). He concludes by acknowledging the lack of power he has in the situation and putting the situation - ultimately - in God’s hands. He acquiesces.

This trust in God is not necessarily something I got from Zayde. He was always moving forward with the belief that you had to do your own thing and believe in yourself. That only then would you gain reward in this world and find what you are looking for. I respect that. But I also see the power in understanding that sometimes we have to turn ourselves over to the fate of the world and understand that life happens and doesn’t always make sense. Zayde taught me to enjoy the wind blowing and the changing of the tides, to fly my kite whenever I found the time and to enjoy the good parts of life (otherwise, according to him, what was the point?). Jacob is trying to enjoy life and in the end, must succumb to unforeseeable and rather difficult circumstances. He does it by acquiescing to God’s power. Just like the Maccabees.

The Maccabees won the war with the Greek’s in 167 BCE, short on man power, but strong on belief in God and themselves. As Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist wrote, “Never doubt that a small group of dedicated [individuals] can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” They banded together and conquered the large Greek army, not succumbing to defeat, but rather agreeing to feel God’s power. In so doing, they allowed themselves to be strong and powerful together with God, and bring us what is now our festival of light. Zayde was like one of those Maccabees. He was determined to change the world, in his own way. He told you when you were wrong. He argued until you left the room or agreed with his point. Although he didn’t leave fate to God’s hands, he was like the Maccabee’s in that he never gave up on his beliefs and was difficult if not impossible to steer from his steadfast opinions. He was my grandfather, and tonight I light the Chanukkah candles for him, for the light he brought into my life and the dedication he, like the Maccabees, demonstrated.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukkah

Two Jews, three opinions

This is one of my favorite parshiot. Maybe because I learned it in depth, but more likely because I get to learn so much each time I engage with it. It is rife with ideas and commentary, and most importantly starts off in Genesis 37:2 a most strange way: אלה תולדות יעקב יוסף בן שבע עשר (Aleh Toldot Ya'akov; Yosef ben sh'va esar). These are the generations of of Isaac, Jospeh was 17 years old. We would expect to hear about the multitudes of generations of Isaac, yet instead we hear about Jacob.

What is this about? The other 11 brothers aren't mentioned here, especially when Joseph isn't even the first-born son! After listening to many different people's commentaries this week, I have discovered the common Jewish aphorism, "Two Jews, three opinions" to be an apt representation. Each person had a different thought:

• Joseph is the most important, we don't need to hear about any others.
• This is actually the story of Joseph and we need to name Jacob as the father and then move on.
• This is a prime example of multiple authors, and evidence that they didn't mesh the stories they wove together seamlessly enough.
• The brothers aren't mentioned to demonstrate that they will have many occasions where they will be forced to contend with Joseph
• This is a story, we don't need all the facts.

Although not perfect on their own, each of these ideas are fascinating and demonstrate something about the text and the Joseph story. Instead of delving into them however, I invite you to explore this parsha and see what meaning you have for this strange verse. I will leave you with this: maybe, we do not need to remember the names of the brothers, but rather their story. That is what is being sown for us here. Now, go and reep.

Torah Parsha Challenge

Parshat VaYeishev

Genesis 37:1-40:23

Summary: The beginning of Joseph! Jacob loves Joseph more, which makes Joseph’s brothers angry. Even more aggravating are Joseph’s dreams where he predicts ruling over those same brothers. They decide to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Aside chapter of Tamar disguising herself as a prostitute and sleeping with her father-in-law-Judah. Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph, he refuses, she has him sent to prison after accusing him of trying to rape her. Pharaoh’s baker and butler have dreams in prison which Joseph interprets.

Beginning of Parsha

37:2 These are the generations of Jacob—Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, still a boy with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives; and Joseph brought evil report of them to their father.

The parsha starts out normally enough: These are the generations of Jacob. From there, we assume that we will get a generational expansion, so we know his children and who bore them. Yet instead, the reader is immediately faced with Joseph.

Questions:

1. Why does the literary author not include all the generations of Jacob? (Are they unimportant? Are we expected to know them already? Is Joseph the only son?)

2. Joseph is constantly upheld as the “favorite” son. He is given a striped coat (or coat of many colors), interprets dreams, and Jacob grieves when told his son has “died.” If you read the rest of Chapter 37 (http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0137.htm), does this inform Gen 37:2? Possibly, this innovation isn’t about the names, but about the stories, where Joseph is the focal point for all stories about the brothers. If that is the case, does Joseph do an effective job carrying the story? Why do we or do we not want him as our protagonist from here until the end of Genesis?

Judah and Tamar, Chapter 38

This chapter doesn’t make sense in the greater scheme of the parsha. Instead of following the story that we start with, we see the story of Judah and Tamar. Brief synopsis: Tamar is married to Judah’s son, he dies, she marries the next one, he dies and Judah will not give Tamar his last son to marry. Tamar gets frustrated, dresses herself as a prostitute, and goes to Einaim. Judah engages her services and agrees to pay her with a goat. However, Judah had to bring the goat at a later time, so he left his staff and seal with her. When Judah sent for his stuff, no one could find the prostitute.

Three months later, Tamar is accused of prostitution and Judah orders her burned to death. She sends Judah the staff and seal, saying that the owner of these things is responsible for the pregnancy. Recognizing his things, Judah takes back the burn order and Tamar’s place in the family is set. Tamar has twin sons, Zerah and Peretz.

The entirety of this chapter is strange, as it is an aside. Not only that, Judah has demonstrated that he is not one of the good sons of Jacob.

Questions:

1. Therefore, what is the point of this story in the context of the Joseph narrative? What change(s) do(es) Judah undergo that makes him different later on? What can we learn from his behavior to help us in our lives?

2. Tamar has twin sons, and although Zerah’s hand emerges first (the midwife ties a red string around it so they know), Perez is born first. What other births does this remind us of (think the previous few parshiot)? Why is it important who is born first? 

What good is life to me?

The following is the D'var Torah I will share tonight at Congregation Beth Aaron, in Billings, MT

I’m going to share with you two stories about events that occurred this week which shook me to my core, making me question my faith and my purpose here on earth.

I don’t usually air my opinions in public, my friend wrote. But what happened this morning was atrocious. On the bus to the old city for work at a Christian-Arab school, we came to a stand-still. After twenty minutes of this, the bus driver came over the speaker and told us that something had happened at a synagogue around the corner, and 4 people were dead (the final count is that 5 people were killed, as well as the two assailants and a police officer).

I changed buses, knowing that I needed to go in the opposite direction and my bus was not going to arrive in time. Arriving in the old city, I waited for a friend so we could walk together into the Armenian quarter. There had been a stabbing a week or so earlier and our defenses were on edge.

I’m going to teach my students, she concluded. My Arab-Christian students. They are still children who need to learn. And when I finish, I will head to my Arabic class.

This statement embodied my experience in Israel. Feeling my heart skip a beat when I awoke to a story of a terror attack, or had a class interrupted by the news alert that Jews had been killed somewhere in Israel was not unfamiliar. But my heart still skipped a beat each time I heard something. My heart skipped also on Monday night, when I heard of these 4 religious men dying in the midst of their prayers on Tuesday morning. Yet my heart  returned to a more normal cadence when I heard that my friend still went to work that day. That she was even more committed to learning Arabic. My friend was giving and grounding herself in the future. She was continuing on with life.

~ ~ ~

“How do you speak to God?” asked one of my fourth graders at the beginning of religious school on Monday. He continued, “how do we know that God is listening? How do we know that God exists?”

Listening to those questions I was floored. My 4th grader was able to articulate one of the questions that confounds the mind of many Jews, many people. As we continued with an impromptu theology discussion, my students asked phenomenal questions. They wanted to know if God exists; why God exists, and how to know. But they also had answers.

These fourth graders, who often blurt out answers without thinking, were thoughtful and each had different specific answers for how to know God was listening: they saw signs, they felt something inside, something good happened. Their answers were as diverse and characteristic of many adults with which I have interacted.

How could my fourth graders, who often cannot spell the word Shabbat or excited, ask such profound questions and excite so much passion in me with a single set of questions? They asked the questions I have had over the years, curiosities about God’s very existence and God’s presence in my own life. 

My passion was ignited, but I didn’t know how to effectively help these students explore God, because I don’t necessarily have the answers myself. How did I ensure that I didn’t squash their curiosity but allow the fire to grow and develop, allowing them to blossom into knowledgable Jews? I saw a future of creativity, of insight, and of Jewish passion, even if I was unsure how to provide it.

Both of these stories impacted me on a visceral level. As with many of us, I am continually in search of meaning. I knew that both of these moments were important to my discovery process. People were dead. God was actively being sought out. I was engaged in the conversation.

Ultimately, and as life often does, both of these events connect us directly back to the tales our Torah weaves. The idea that we are seized by life’s moments so profoundly that they shake us to our core is not lost on the storytellers that crafted our Torah. They masterfully understood that life’s moments affect us and wrote vignettes that exemplify this. Their stories are meaningful because they are deeply human. In this week’s Parasha, a mother is deeply impacted by the birth of her children and then by the decisions she must make about their destiny. 

Contained in the text are two moments when the mother, Rebecca contends with God. In the first, Rebecca is not able to become pregnant and Isaac pleads with God to bring them children. God answers his prayers and Rebecca, for the first time, is pregnant with twins. Yet she is frustrated by the violent struggle the twins are enacting within her womb. Confused and in pain, she approaches God, wondering why this is her lot in life. She doesn’t know that these two boys will one day become fathers of great nations, or that there is a reason for their struggles inside of her. Instead, Rebecca inquires, “If [this struggle] is so, why do I exist.” (25:22)

The second moment where Rebecca is questioning God is when she asks God, “What good will life be to me.” (27:46) This inquiry comes from a place of despair, with Rebecca contemplating the fate of her son Jacob. Rebecca knows that Jacob must be saved from Esau, that Jacob stole the birthright from Esau and Esau is angry, but also that Jacob must get married to fulfill the blessing his father bestowed upon him. Jacob must marry a good woman who will be his partner in carrying out the covenantal blessing.

Both of these moments are also visceral responses to emotional experiences. In fact, they have the same core meaning, asking the questions: what purpose is there in this pain? And if [I] have the pain, why do I exist? In the midst of pain, Rebecca struggles to maintain her composure and blurts out her frustration to God, to Isaac. She desires a solution and gets responses from both God and her husband.

First, God answers her, providing a pithy oracle that Rebecca is carrying two sons, two nations within her womb. Rebecca gains salve for her pain. She knows that something will come from this anguish, that she will have a future. More importantly, Rebecca knows that her legacy will be in her sons, that they will each do something important with their lives. This is the future her womb will bear, which allows Rebecca to continue on with her pregnancy and handle the pain the struggle entails.

The second scenario, where Rebecca implores God: “I cannot bear this, what good is my life if [my son marries a Hitite woman]?” is also followed by a response. The solution is provided by Isaac, who ultimately agrees that Jacob should go to Rebecca’s brother, Laban and find a wife there. Here too, Rebecca feels that her worries have been heard and that there will be a future for her son.

“Why do I exist? What good is life to me?” As Rebecca asks these existential human questions, she receives responses. These solutions allow Rebecca to continue on and feel that she has been answered, that there is a future.

In fact, these solutions provide resolve for the bigger existential questions. The questions being “Why do I exist? and What good is life to me?” These solutions each have a unique trait in common. Besides being one and the same, these solutions offer a future for Rebecca. They offer her an opportunity to see that her life’s purpose is the future, her future, in her sons.

Fast forward to Monday, with the two experiences I shared. We are left reeling after the news of what occurred in Jerusalem, asking these same questions: “Why do I exist? What good is life to me?” I am left struggling with my student’s questions.

Why do I exist? What’s next? These were the questions that penetrated my soul after hearing the news of the attack. I sat dumbstruck, unsure what to do or how to move forward. People were dead and I didn’t know what to do.

What good is my life [if I cannot answer these students]? My fourth graders asked me questions to which I did not have solid answers. I felt unequipped to handle their curiosity, but knew they would not be content with a response of “I don’t know, let me find out.”

In my struggle, I didn’t act like Rebecca and turn to God or a fellow human, but I recognized that the answer had already been provided to me. Each of the unique stories I experienced/witnessed on Monday had ready-made solutions offered, if I was just able to see.

My friend, after seeing the hatred in Jerusalem, continued on. She went to work and her students, determined to teach them. She was demonstrating her commitment to the future, to instilling within young children the importance of what happens next. The solution was in providing for the future, in giving them an education that will allow them to help make the world a little less angry, a little less painful.

My fourth grade class also provided me with an answer. Having asked what good my life was if I wasn’t able to answer their inquiries, I was downtrodden and unsure. Yet from their own wisdom, they demonstrated that no matter what, my purpose is to enable them to continually ask questions. By providing them with the space to inquire and push back, I was allowing them the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of their Jewish tradition and therefore a deeper desire to maintain connected. I was helping them commit themselves to the future.

My friend and I each found responses to these existential questions in the promise of the future. Rebecca too, found her response in what the future will hold. Each of these circumstances provided unique opportunities to take a step back from the hustle of everyday life and ask the existential questions. From that place of insight, we were and in fact, are able to explore what good our lives can serve, especially when surrounded by pain, suffering, and death.

The good that life holds is manifest in the future generation, in the next group of people who will grow up and live in this world. Rebecca found contentment in knowing that her sons would make something of themselves, and in knowing that Jacob’s destiny would be fulfilled in a positive manner. My friend was able to continue on only by looking at her students and seeing them as a positive light, as something good that will move forward. I recognized that my students were the promise of the future, my legacy that I am leaving each day I teach them.

“Why do I exist? What good is life to me?”

Our lives are full of these existential questions. Our job is to ask the questions, like Rebecca, and also like Rebecca, to look forward to the future. We must see that the future is where our lives are headed, that the next generation is the embodiment of that future.  Even more, we must facilitate the conversations that allows the next generation to grow and discover for themselves the deep meaning that life has. By discovering the power and beauty that this coming generation bears, we will be able to answer these existential questions and find meaning in our lives.

What is your commitment to the future? What will you do to ensure that your life has a purpose, that you are providing for the future?

Chayei Sarah: Liminality

(Torah challenge as sent to Congregation Beth Aaron in Billings, MT)

Parshat Chayei Sarah

Genesis 23:1-25:18

A brief summary: Sarah dies at the ripe age of 127 years old. Abraham decides to bury her in the cave of Machpela (after searching for a good place). Abraham decides to find a wife for his son Isaac and sends his servant to do so. The servant meets Rebecca at a well, where she gives him and his camels water. Lastly, Abraham marries Keurah and has six more sons, dying at the age of 175 years.

The Cave of Machpela

In Ch 23 Sarah dies and Abraham wants to bury her. He is in Hebron and asks for a piece of land. The people in Hebron want to give it to him for free, but Abraham insists on paying for it.

Why does Abraham, a man who is given multiple covenants with God and told that he will eventually inherit the land, claim to be a stranger in the land? How does that connect to his desire to buy the land where he wants to bury Sarah?

Why is it important for Abraham to buy the land, not be given it (as he receives so many other things, especially from God)?

Old Age as a Liminal Stage

Ch 24:1-9 shows Abraham rushing to ensure his son, Isaac, will have a wife. In his last few days, he makes his servant promise to find Isaac a wife. Abraham tells the servant to put his hand on Abraham’s thigh and promise to go back to Abraham’s homeland and find a wife from among his people.

Why does Abraham wait until he’s old and Sarah has passed away before finding Isaac a wife?

Why does Abraham have the servant grab his thigh to make this promise?

What is the importance of the servant going back to Abraham’s homeland? Why must Isaac’s wife not be from among the Cana’anites?

Some other thoughts on the Parsha:

There is mention of spontaneous prayer in this week’s parsha. Abraham’s servant is at the well and offers up a prayer to God. Follow this link to learn more about one Rabbi’s interpretation: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/chayeisarah_artson5759.shtml

To explore a less traditional commentary on the parsha, discussing familial relations, in particular Isaac’s reactions to his impending marriage, follow this link (there are two thoughts, the first follows what I suggested): http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5772/chayei-sarah/

Sodom, (G)Amorah, and Veteran's Day

Here is my sermon for tonight, at Congregation Beth Aaron in Billings, MT

Parshat Va’Yeira

Destruction.

Bravery

Questioning.

Daring.

Suspense.

Victory.

Any number of things could be characterized by these 5 adjectives. In particular, a story human destruction. Or a story of about war.

Destruction. Parshat Va’yeira is a patch-work quilters dream. It includes many patches, each flimsily sown together through description and people, with Abraham as the common thread throughout. One of these patches is the story of Sodom and (G)Amorah. God decides that the people of Sodom and (G)Amorah are evil beyond redemption, and so plans to kill all of them. God shares God’s plan with Abraham, who asks God to save the people, if Abraham can find 10 righteous people within the cities. Abraham cannot, so God follows through on God’s plan, killings all inhabitants of these two cities (save for Lot and his family). The cities are left smoking, which Abraham glimpses from a distance. Destruction like the biblical world had never seen before.

Bravery. I imagine this conversation between an officer and his troops. “Men, we head out at 0500 hours. Prepare yourselves to fight for your lives, to face scenes of despair, death and destruction such that you have never encountered before. Prepare to know that you might die. Prepare to fight Germany.” So might end the training exercises on 5 June 1944, the night before D-Day, in Normandy, France.

I imagine that night, men writing letters to their wives, their girlfriends, their parents. “I love you,” they wrote. “More than anything else I can say, I love you. Do not forget me. I might die tomorrow. I’m scared. But I love you.” How many letters that resemble this were found or sent to families after the fact, physical souvenirs of a deadly day.

D-Day was not an incredibly deadly landing operation, relatively speaking. But it was an invasion of power, of unity. It demonstrated the bravery of American soldiers, fighting overseas, many in their first war ever. Most importantly, it demonstrated strength and power. Especially the power of the survivors. The Veterans.

My question for us this evening is: how are these two stories connected?

Questioning. God begins by thinking to God’s self, not knowing if God needs to share God’s plans with Abraham (Gen 18:17). If God acts independently, destroying the people of Sodom and (G)Amorah without first engaging Abraham, are there any consequences (God recognizes that Abraham is becoming God’s partner and so God has to bring Abraham into the dialogue.)

Each and every officer has the same inner-dialogue, questioning whether or not the soldiers need to know what they are about to do, what they are about to encounter. Few soldiers knew the details of their mission on D-Day. Not until they were on the boats, about to land in Normandy, France, did they begin to understand. Even then, the officers only told the soldiers what they needed to know. The soldiers, in this case, are Abraham, while the officers are God. The officers don’t want  to elicit push-back, they don’t want to intimidate or frighten the soldiers. The war needed to occur. There wasn’t time for discussion.

Daring. Once God tells Abraham the plan, as they look over into Sodom and (G)Amorah, Abraham begins to question. He says to God, “Hey God. I’ve got a problem with all this destruction. You say you want to destroy these two cities, but what’s the point? How can you do this? And besides, the people can’t be that bad, can they?”

God replies to him: “Abraham, my son, you haven’t seen as much as I have. These people have committed heavy sins and they must be punished.”

“But, God,” Abraham challenges. “How can you destroy the righteous, just people with these evil-doers? The good people didn’t do anything wrong! How can you, God, the Judge of the earth, not judge each person justly? You should save the righteous people.” (Gen 18:23, 25)

From there, God and Abraham negotiate, finally agreeing that if Abraham can find 10 righteous people in Sodom and (G)Amorah, God will not destroy the cities. Alas, these ten people cannot be found and so God destroys the cities, burning them to the ground. From here, we look forward to our soldiers, sitting in their boats on the shores of Normandy, knowing they are about to head into battle. Were our soldiers to be like Abraham, they would counter their officers’ instructions. The cacophony of “But wait, I can’t kill innocent people who get in my way?” “How long are we going to be fighting for?” and the small, voices whispering, “I’m scared” would rise up to a high crescendo. Instead, the boat turned silent after the officers’ commands. These soldiers are instilled with an understanding that when given a direct order, they must follow through on it, no questions asked.

Victory. Abraham fights back. Our soldiers were quietly accepting, even though their inner-dialogue might have been similar to Abraham’s. Each reaction is acceptable, especially given their circumstances. Both Abraham and the soldiers need to remember a quote from our tradition that reads, במקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש (m. Avot 2:5). This means, in a place where there are no [righteous] people, rise up and attempt to be a [righteous] person. Abraham cannot give up on the values that God has attempted to instill in him up to this point. God wants Abraham to be a partner, which cannot occur unless God allows Abraham to actively voice opposition. Abraham has to be the righteous person that cannot be found in Sodom or (G)Amorah. He must stand up for what he believes in.

Our American war heroes, the people we will celebrate on November 11th, for Veteran’s Day, also demonstrate this Jewish aphorism. Our soldiers sit in the boats, about to land on the shores of Normandy; young men, unsure what they will meet once they step onto the sand. They are good people, determined to fight for their country. These soldiers, our soldiers, were willing to be the good people, the righteous ones. Even more so, they were drafted, yet they still fought valiantly and courageously. They are the ones who chose to fight for their country. Not just on D-Day, but throughout most of American history, the military has been a key method of displaying patriotism. That means our American war heroes are these righteous people, patriotic individuals actively supporting their home beliefs, even when others were unwilling to do so. They are the ones who choose to fight for their rights, who choose to uphold American values from their core.

Our soldiers are determined to be good people, attempting to bring peace to America and the American people, regardless of the stakes. Even more so, they fight with strength and pride, no matter their personal beliefs in the matter. In fact, our soldiers in their boats must have put aside their beliefs and come together as a collective, American troop. They strive to be those righteous people, to protect their country, to represent their country. They demonstrate another way to be righteous, by not pushing back, but by listening. By upholding a collective belief.

Abraham actively talked back to God. He contended with God and told God that he wanted to save the people. Our soldiers actively fought for their country, for America, while holding their tongues. My purpose is not to say who is correct in their actions: Abraham or the soldiers. Rather, I would like to suggest that both acted appropriately for their given circumstances. But I praise the soldiers today, for fighting for their country. They put their lives on the line and were willing to engage in battle, either on the front lines or as supporting individuals. There was a sacrifice here. They demonstrated a courage and bravery of a different sort from Abraham. There were high stakes and these individuals still went ahead and did their civic duty. These are our American heroes to whom we look up to today. These are the people we honor everyday, but especially on November 11, on Veteran’s Day.

Lech Lecha: What's in a Name?

This past week was the 12th anniversary (or 13th-I cannot remember) of my becoming a Bat Mitzvah. Although there are no monumental words I have for this occasion, I am going to suggest something. Having now spent a year exploring the parshiot, week by week, engaging the text and connecting it to my own life, not necessarily delving into commentary, this year is a little more busy. We have already read the whole of Genesis and Exodus in the past two months alone. Therefore, writing a full-blown D'var Torah may not be the most feasible thing for me each week. However, to the best of my ability, I will post my "Torah challenge," which I send weekly to my student pulpit in Billings, MT. My hope is that you find the questions I pose intriguing and meaningful.

A (belated) Shabbat Shalom!

Genesis 12:1-17:27

In this Torah portion, God makes a covenant with Abram promising to make his ancestors a great nation. God changes his name to Abraham. Abraham has a child with Hagar, and names him Ishmael. God then promises Abraham's barren wife, Sarah, that she will have a child. (1)

What’s in a Name (Part I) (Gen 16:1-16)

Children are important in the Torah. Although those crying out for children usually comes from barren women, Abram is the one who gasps to God: "What can You give me, seeing that I shall die childless?" (15:2). Abram is the first one to cry out for a child. Yet not until a chapter later is Abram’s call answered (although through Sarai’s decision).

Sarai, desperate for a son, gives her handmaid, Hagar, to Abram in order to procreate. However, Sarai gets jealous of Hagar’s pregnancy and sends her away into the wilderness. While away, she is visited by an angel who tells her in Chapter 16:11

 וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, הִנָּךְ הָרָה וְיֹלַדְתְּ בֵּן, וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ יִשְׁמָעֵאל, כִּי-שָׁמַע יְהוָה אֶל-עָנְיֵךְ

And the angel of the God said to her: 'Behold, you are pregnant, and shall have a son; you shall call his name Ishmael, because God has heard your affliction.

Hagar, a woman with little significant who is despised by Sarai, is spoken to by an angel of God while she is despairing in the wilderness. The angel tells Hagar to name her son Yishmael, literally meaning God will hear.

What does it mean that God will hear? Is it referring to the past, to Hagar, or to the future, to Yishmael? If either of them are the case, how can we understand this name in context of Sarai’s hate of Hagar (does it mean God does not hear Sarai?)?

Or, can we understand this as meaning that Abram’s call was answered?

What’s in a Name (Part II)? (Gen. 17:1-16)

Sarai and Abram begin our parsha being called by these names. God sends them on a journey, intending to establish God’s covenant with them. In the end, when the covenant is established and Abram and Sarai have listened to God’s instructions, God rewards them.

Gen 17:5 וְלֹא-יִקָּרֵא עוֹד אֶת-שִׁמְךָ, אַבְרָם; וְהָיָה שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָהָם, כִּי אַב-הֲמוֹן גּוֹיִם נְתַתִּיךָ

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee.

Gen 17:15 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-אַבְרָהָם, שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ, לֹא-תִקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי:  כִּי שָׂרָה, שְׁמָהּ

And God said unto Abraham: 'As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

Both Sarah and Abraham receive a ה (hey) in their name. The letter hey is the letter that shows up twice in God’s name, the tetragrammaton, yud-hey-vav-hey.

What does it mean that Sarah and Abraham are given this ה, which is part of God’s name? Who have they become, through this?

The Lubavicher Rebbe has an interesting thought on the hey added to Abraham’s name. “Up until this point, the thrust of Abraham's life was his spiritual relationship with God; from this point on it was to be his role as a leader of the masses, a teacher of the Divine truth to the “multitudes.”” Abraham’s hey is representative of the Godliness he now possesses. Now, he can pass on God’s teachings through his own life. (2)

As Reform Jews, we too can learn something from this. Do we need God to come to us and bestow us with God’s good will, or should we attempt to act, as we already know, b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God and demonstrate Godliness from the beginning? If that is so, how do we add the Godliness into our lives and pass it on to those around us?

Another interesting thing to consider is that this section describes how we must circumcise our children and make them a part of the covenant. Only once Abraham is given his ה is he told these laws and made to do so.

How does circumcision make one part of the covenant of the Jewish people? Why is Abraham only told to do this, to circumcise himself and essentially “become” a Jew, at the end of the Parsha? What does he have to do in order to deserve the covenant?

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Breathing Praise: Noach

Parshat Noah, 6:9-11:32

This week’s parsha, Parshat Noach, is another one of those jam-packed parshiot in which we can spend days or weeks thinking and discussing it, still not completing the discussion or immersing ourselves fully into the text. However, just like any other parsha, we spend a week studying it, with the culmination being on Shabbat.

Speaking of Shabbat, Alyssa Gray, a Talmudic scholar writing about Shabbat liturgy in Lawrence Hoffman’s My People’s Prayerbook, Volume 10: Shabbat Morning, comments that the words נשמת כל חי (click for English translation) (found at the end of פסוקי דזמרא, as the introduction to the concluding blessing) literally mean the breath of every living being. However, That breath is not just referring to humans. Rather, it refers to all creatures that breath the air of the earth. The proof text for that comes from our parsha this week. In Genesis 7:22, it is written that the Flood destroys everything with a “breath of life.” The very same breath of life with which every living being praises God in נשמת כל חי(Nishmat Kol Chai) (Follow link for Hebrew and musical versions of this prayer).

So then, what do these contrasts mean, especially relative to this part of the prayer service, which is all about enumerating praise for God. It would seem, that Genesis 7:22 is pointing out that God needed to destroy every living thing, even the animals, because they too were capable of doing evil and wrong. Maybe God made a mistake. In Genesis 6:6-7, we read: "And God repented that God had made man on the earth, and it grieved God in God’s heart. And Adonai said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for I repent that I have made them.” It would seem that God made a mistake and now is attempting to rectify it through the Flood and destruction of the earth. The classic commentator, Rashi (France, 1040-1105) has a suggestion about this: "Although it was known to God that [humans] will sin and be destroyed, God nevertheless created them for the sake of the righteous who will descend from them.” (Berashit Rabah 27:4) In that sense, it would mean that God didn’t make a mistake and instead needed to “redo” creation in order to give people a better chance to become righteous. In that sense, every living being needed to be reformed, so that their breaths could indeed praise God.

The contrast is in the praising. Everyone on earth, save for Noah, his family and then all the animals, is destroyed. The rest of the peoples had become so wicked that they could not feasibly praise God with their living breath. Therefore, God needed to render everyone incapable, by wiping them out, in order to afford them the opportunity to learn and grow again. From that, people begin to praise and acknowledge God, recognizing that God does have a place in the world and in their lives. Through the praise of God, both in this introductory segment of our morning service, and throughout our daily lives, we keep the world good and eliminate the need for another Flood or negative action of retribution by God.

Shabbat Shalom.

Bookending the Torah

Although the actual parsha for this Shabbat is Parshat Berashit (Genesis), I wanted to write about Parshat V'zot HaBrachot (This is the blessing) in conjunction with Parshat Berashit. Mostly, this is because my congregation, here in Billings, MT, is doing things a little differently than the traditional service. We are doing Simchat Torah and Shabbat, all wrapped into one. They've found at least one way to get people there!

This parsha (V'zot HaBracha) gets the short end of the stick. It’s found at the very end of the Torah, so you would think it is the most read and discussed, that we get excited when it shows up around Simchat Torah. But in fact, this year, like many years (if not all years), we don’t read it except on Simchat Torah to bookend our  yearly Torah reading. It is read as the conclusion of the Torah, with the beginning of the Torah being Genesis, the beginning. Moses has lead us through the desert and guided us as a people for almost ¾ of the Jewish year (cycle). The least we can do is acknowledge that guidance, no?

Even stranger, is the fact that this parsha is lumped in with Genesis. Or maybe, that is its beauty. It isn’t read on its own, as its own Parshat HaShavuah, weekly Torah portion, because we shouldn’t see Moses’ death as the end. Rather, we should recognize that Moses was the leader who enabled us, as the Jewish people, to begin seeing ourselves as a people. We are indeed starting over after Moses’ death; we are heading into the promised land with a new leader, not our old, beloved one. We must learn to trust ourselves. We must begin to set our own path and believe in the rightness of that path. We must start at the beginning.

Therefore, it does actually seem fitting, to go from the end and immediately back to the beginning. That’s what happened to our people. That is what happens to us: we get to experience the whole Torah again, from a new perspective, a new age, or a slightly different angle. We are given the opportunity to re-immerse ourselves in the text and learn. We are given the chance to start a new with a clean slate. How will you begin again? How will you commit to learning and growing anew? How will you commit to allowing you perspective to be changed?

Ha'azinu: Who Shall Listen?

This week’s parsha, parshat Ha’azinu, falls on Shabbat T’shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Reading the parsha earlier in the week, I was so excited to think that I had finished the Torah, that everything had happened and I had completed a year of reading each parsha, and writing a drash on it. However, when I went to look at the Torah to look something up for Torah study, I was surprised! There is a whole extra parsha after this one. Needless to say, I was slightly disappointed. But alas, in all the shuffle of the High Holidays, something had to get confused and forgotten. This is a small thing and I’ll take it.

In thinking that this is the last parsha of the Torah, I was intrigued to find that it ends with Moses going up on the mountain and dying. God tells him to do like Aaron, go up the mountain and be gathered to his kin. Moses knows, and is reminded, that Moses broke faith with God and is therefore able to see the land from a distance, but not from up close. In my world, that was how the Torah ended. A rather apex-like ending, but an incomplete one (stay tuned for next week, where the parsha is actually the last parsha in the Torah and I get to experience my excitement all over again!).

Instead, we have the continuation of an epic story. God told us last week to write down God’s words in a poem, as a reminder to the people. The words should serve as a witness to what will happen to the people if they go astray. In that song, we get four parts. The first past is God establishing God’s loving relationship with the people. The second sees the people rejecting God in favor of other deities, with other peoples. Next, God decides to decimate the people. Lastly, God relents, recognizing that if God did destroy the people Israel, other people’s might feel they were the cause of that destruction. God is humanized. In this poem, meant to guide us away from joining to the deities of other people, God in fact becomes more benevolent. Yes, God’s anger is apparent and fear is instilled in one’s heart from reading this epic poem. But God is showed as being caring, as considerate, as aware of the place of the people in the greater scheme of things. In short, God still cares about us, about the Jewish people.

As we find ourselves in the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are made aware of our place in history. We are made aware that God can choose to not care, to destroy us anyway (if God destroyed us, we wouldn’t be around to worry about who destroyed us!). We know that God’s hand is powerful and that God is our rock. Yet we see that God, like a benevolent parent, sees that we will slip up, that we will go astray, that we will miss the mark, whether in large or small ways. But God will not leave us completely. God will not abandon us to walk on our own, nor will God completely forget about us as God’s people.

A midrash on the parsha reflects God’s attitude.

The Holy Blessed One at times appears, and at times does not appear;
at times hears, and at times does not want to hear;
at times responds, and at times does not respond;
at times may be addressed, and at times may not be addressed;
at times may be found, and at times may not be found;
at times is near, and at times is not near.(Midrash Tanhuma, Ha’azinu 4)

I would like to argue that God is, at this time, at God’s most apparent, most able to listen and respond, most patient and ready to be addressed, most present and most near. At this time, may we discover a way to demonstrate to God that we appreciate God’s presence in our lives, and find ways to come closer to God, to not warrant the harsh punishment or decree that God does discuss in this parsha. “God avenges the blood of God’s servants,” our Torah writes in Deuteronomy 32:43. Let us warrant that God avenge us, let us warrant that God listens to us.

Shabbat shalom!

Blessings and Bounty

Last weekend, I participated at a spiritual retreat at Camp Alonim in the Simi Valley, about an hour from my apartment. Due to the fact that I was participating and therefore not on my laptop, I did not write a d'var Torah. Everything in its time. However, here are my thoughts on this week's parsa!

This past week marked another new occasion. I began teaching religious school. As I waited for my students to arrive at Congregation Or Ami, I looked around the bare walls of the classroom and tried to imagine what this room would look like by the end of the year. What projects would be up on the walls? Who would be that creative kid who writes an awesome poem about God, or who would describe a connection to God in such a profound way that it had to be displayed? (To explain, I am teaching an entire curriculum on God to 4th graders - a challenging, sometimes daunting task with any age, but especially with 4th graders. But hey, I always like a good challenge).

At the end of my first two classes (both Monday and Wednesday providea different group of kids), my madricha (high school age teaching aide) and I hung up 4 posters, two of each kind. On two of them it was written: What do you think of when you think of God? and on the other two was written the words Kehilah Kedosha, holy community. We discussed both concepts/themes and the kids wrote what they thought. They had so many incredible ideas for how to create that kehilah kedosha within our classroom and the greater Or Ami community that I was blown away. One boy wrote that the best way to create this community was by giving back and doing good things for others. I was floored! A 4th grader came up with that of his own accord! When I asked them about God, they surprised me again. Their images of God were the typical man with a beard in the cloud, but their ideas of what God does and God’s power were astounding. My students shared words like creator, imaginer, dreamer, clouds, judgment, prayer. It was incredible.

Consulting this week’s Torah portion, I wasn’t surprised that our conversation fit into the parsha. God, along with the priests, tells all the people, הסכת ושמע ישראל היום הזה נהיית לעם ה׳ אלוהיך, Keep quiet and listen, Israel; on this day you became a people before/to Adonai, your God (Deut. 27:9). This command, but also this blessing, is very much how I felt about my students this week. They heard the words of the Shema and latched onto them, wanting to learn more. They became a part of a people, our people, the Jewish people, but they also became a part of something else. Together, we became a part of a class, a group of people who will learn and grow together in the coming year, changing and exploring as we do so. I am grateful to be a part of that, to help support and create the community. And I cannot wait to see what will come of it.

Of course, the parsha continues to discuss blessings and curses; that if you follow God’s commandments you will be blessed and that if you don’t you will be cursed. Although unrelated to my classroom necessarily, I find that this parallels my life as a Rabbinical student. Do your reading, your assignments, and you will be blessed with bountiful learning and experiences. However, should you choose not to do as you’re told and read all the readings or do the assignments, your lot will not be as pleasant and you will not get as much out of it. Granted, this circumstance is not black and white, nor does it cast a horrible life outcome on those who choose it, but it is my own personal version of those blessings and curses for this week. My choice is the blessings, to the best of my ability. I only hope that my choices lead me well and help me find more meaning in the messiness of everyday life.

Shabbat Shalom.

Rockets, refuge and retribution

The following is the text of the sermon I will give tonight at B'nai Jehudah, in my position as Rabbinic Intern.

Each day I wake up and check my phone for the news from Israel. Is this the day I need to prepare myself for a friend’s passing? How many people died overnight? Was it someone I knew? I walk through my day in a daze, unable to give work 100% of my attention, instead filled with dread and knots in my stomach, knowing my home is under fire. I find myself looking for airline tickets. I am sick with worry.

The country which I love with my entire being is under attack. My people, my neighbors, my friends are being terrorized and simultaneously engaged in this military action. The escalation has increased significantly from the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frankel, and Eyal Yifrach, to a revenge killing of Muhammed Hussein Abu-Khadir, an Arab teen, to an all out invasion into Gaza. 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in this battle. Hundreds of innocent Arabs have been killed. The anguish I feel is all-consuming. I am plagued by questions of what to do with the bloodshed, the pain, and death.

The questions are ever-present. Our tradition says that we shall not kill, that we should protect ourselves against murder. So then, what does it mean to defend? How long can Israel sit and be bombarded with bombs before she acts, knowing there will be collateral damage in the wake? What do we do when people take a situation into their own hands, not consulting a higher power or the laws of human engagement?

In searching for these answers, I realized that this week’s Torah portion deals with just these complex ideas. It defines what רצח, murder is, tells us how to handle the bloodshed that occurs. The parsha even goes so far as to delineate what encompasses a city of refuge, who can go there and why.

Anyone who takes a life sustains some sort of punishment. The parsha specifies, for instance, that only one who murders another intentionally should be punished by a blood-avenger, or a close family member who becomes a state-appointed agent. Only certain objects or means of killing count as 1st degree murder. In Numbers 35:21, the explanation is that “if [a man] pushed [someone] in hate or hurled something at him on purpose and death resulted,” the instigator can be put to death. That insinuates that those people throwing rockets at Gaza, and those doing so from Gaza into Israel deserve punishment.

I think to myself “that cannot be right.” The idea of killing members of the Israeli army for sending rockets into Gaza doesn’t seem like a good solution to me, but nor does allowing Hamas operatives who bombard Israel with rocket fire to continue to do so. Following orders cannot be punishable by death, can it? The parsha doesn’t suggest what to do when people are dying on both sides of the conflict. It doesn’t clarify how to support Israel, while your moral compass is telling you that innocent death is wrong. Nor does it give an option for what to do when the people firing the rockets are simply following orders, not the ones making the ultimate decisions.

We, as Jews, come from a place that maintains the importance of life above all else. That claim is being threatened by the idea of a real-life situation where lives will be lost on a daily basis, on both sides of the conflict. My heart says that Israel must support herself, despite the death count, but then I hear another voice saying that any death is still death. The question then becomes, not how do we define murder, but how do we maintain our morality in this sea of death?

The Torah, as any good teacher does, offers some kind of hope and solution to this moral dilemma. This hope comes in the form of cities of refuge, ערי המקלט. The purpose of a city of refuge is to offer asylum to one who has accidentally killed another individual and is worried for his own life. He can turn to one of these six cities of refuge and be given peace of mind that he is safe and protected as long as he is within the city limits. At the time when the tribe where the murder took place is ready to prosecute, the suspected killer is taken to court and brought to justice. This is our first of two positives offered by the cities: a person gains protection until a court steps in to judge. The second positive we glean is that time is offered to let minds and hearts not directly emotionally involved in the circumstances preside over the trial.

Yet, how does this relate to modern-day Israel. The word מקלט in Hebrew means shelter, specifically air raid shelter. This is where Israelis go every time they hear the air raid siren, marking another rocket being launched at them. Therefore, Israel has a few more than six ערי-מקלט, we have thousands. These shelters literally save lives. They serve their purpose, of housing people from the barrage around them and give them sanctuary for a few minutes. Although these shelters are not necessarily used to shelter suspected killers, we see that the refuge is still imperative.

Were we to consider these cities of refuge as actual cities again, we might still be able to imagine it in today’s escalating skirmish. I know intrinsically that there is not one individual that is firing these rockets into Gaza or into Israel. Rather, many people are responsible for each rocket being sent over the wall. Many of these people are likely the unintentional killers we hear about in our parsha. The intention of their commanders may be to kill, but they personally do not wish to kill anyone. That moral dilemma and conscience weighs strong. This is where the cities of refuge come in. Those who know they have taken innocent lives may search in vain for a way to rationalize what they have done or are currently doing. They are the ones who need the cities of refuge. They need a place to put distance between themselves and their actions, to be judged by an outside party with no revenge to be had.

The Torah delineates six rules of how exactly we go about the process of negotiating a legal decision when it comes to murder. This is supposed to be about what happens when one person commits murder, detailing how the murder should be avenged, or not avenged, and how to bring resolution to the initial conflict. However, we are not told what to do when multiple deaths occur and it is not one person doing the killing, but one people against another. Nor are we given the guidelines for what to do when there are chains of command, with a Commander telling his soldiers what to do, therefore potentially changing the onus from the person doing the action to the Commanding Officer.

Perhaps, when this war is over, a conclusive solution can be reached. The International Criminal Court of the United Nations, a supposedly unbiased body, might be able to try those in the upper echelons of both Hamas leadership and the Israeli military. I don’t want to see my brothers and sisters as killers, but nor do I want to see my neighbors as killers either. I lived and worked with Arabs. I ate lunch with them everyday. I shared gossip with them. They aren’t killers either. Many of them are my friends as well. I want to see retribution, so Israel maintains her right to exist, and so I don’t feel this moral dilemma of who is responsible for these deaths.

Yet right now, there is no solution. At least not one that will leave everyone happy and all parties feeling they have gotten what they ask for/deserve. Each party is currently grieving and feels they are in the right with regard to killings in this Operation. Each party wants to gain justice. But if both sides continue to pursue justice on their own, they will continue to bring death, hatred and pain to the world. 

Unfortunately, these six rules for what to do when homicide occur do not have a timeline attached to them. They do not say exactly when we should enact the process and how to carry it out. Especially during times of war when emotions are high and anger flies faster than the rockets in the sky.

For now, we must recognize that there is no easy solution. Yet, there can be a tempering of hate and anger, a conscious effort to fill the world with more love and peace. Although naive, the more love we bring into the world, the more we counter the hate around us. We must recognize that these laws of what to do with homicide were put down for us, as the Jewish people, to bring expiation. If we acknowledge that, we can cease to take life and death matters into our own hands.

How do we bring about this tempering of hate and anger? We must reach out to our Muslim neighbors, engaging them in conversation and friendship. We can give money to Israeli organizations like OneFamily and the Reform Movement in Israel (the IMPJ) who help make life in these places of refuge a little easier. We can write our Congressmen/woman, urging them to suggest respite for both Palestinian and Israeli children caught up in this struggle. We can and must make our voices heard.

This Shabbat, may we gain peace and and understanding with our brothers and sisters. May we merit to live in a place where rockets do not rain down and hatred is not the modus operandi. May this Shabbat bring us compassion and time to consider how we can bring betterment to our broken world.

Contracts, Contacts and Commandedness

This week’s parsha, called מטות, meaning tribes, is a difficult one. Found in Numbers 30:2-32:42, it comes at a time when the Torah isn’t necessarily engrossing, meaning we could easily pass it over and feel we hadn’t missed much. However, the beauty of Torah is that we don’t skip parshiot (Torah portions), just because we don’t find them the most enthralling. Rather, we find something in that portion that speaks to us and go from there. In fact, this idea, that there is always a takeaway, no matter how large or small, is helpful for us in life. When we are faced with a situation, even if we feel it will not end well or there is no purpose, we must attempt to find the good in that scenario.

Our parsha does still have meaningful takeaways. Before we discuss, however, let us get an overview, so at least we know what is being addressed. The parsha starts off talking about vows and obligations. First, we are told that when a man makes a vow or takes an obligation upon himself, he must uphold it. [The word vow, in Hebrew, נדר, neder, is the same word in the name for the service that begins the evening of Yom Kippur, כל נדרי, Kol Nidre. This specific reading is discussing our nullification of vows for the coming year, our forgiveness of lost vows in the past year. We do this, because as Jews, we recognize how important our vows are, and therefore treat them as holy entities. The foundation for these vows comes from this week’s parsha.] The other vows discussed are the ones a woman makes, either in her father’s or husband’s home. As women were either property of their husband or father, this covers almost all circumstances. Once a woman makes a vow, whether in her father’s or husband’s house, she must uphold it. However, her husband or father has the final say. If the man doesn’t say anything about the vow, the woman keeps it; if the man disallows the vow, than the vow is nullified and she is free from sin before God.

Then, the people are commanded by God (via Moses) to fight the Midianites. Moses tells them to take 1000 soldiers from each tribe, and go attack. We don’t hear of the battle, just that every male from among the Midianites is killed. The fighters bring back spoils, the women, and children. Those women who have “known” a Midianite man are to be put to death, as are all of the male children. Everyone and everything else goes to the people, split up so that those who fought get a greater percentage of the spoils.

The last part of the parsha discusses how 2.5 of the 12 tribes don’t want to enter the land of Egypt. They ask Moses if they can stay in Transjordan, and he is appalled. These people have wandered with the Israelites for 40 years and now don’t want part of the land of Israel? Even more so, they aren’t willing to fight for the land that God has promised them. When Moses addresses them with this issue, they clarify and suggest that they just want to take advantage of the good land that they have already seen. These people, of the tribes of Gad and Reuben, and half of Manasseh, have no intention of dismissing the rest of their people. Rather, they want to set up a community and let their cattle stay in Transjordan, at which point they will send soldiers into Israel and help the rest of the Israelites fight off the opposing peoples there in the land. That settled, Moses concedes.

First of all, Moses’s immediate distrust of these 2.5 tribes is jarring. Yes, Moses has spent the past 40 years leading these people through the desert and working tirelessly to get them where they need to go (Israel), but he should also have grown to trust them as well. Yet, as much as these tribes may want to make decisions for themselves, they must have an awareness of the people around them. If that is the case, they would and should be conscientious of those around them and their expectations moving forward.

Due to this, we must look at Moses’ actions more closely. But first, we must understand that Moses is under a lot of pressure. He has been charged with leading the Israelites into the land of Israel, while simultaneously knowing he himself will not gain entrance. Not only that, he must continue to teach his predecessor, Joshua, and guide him for assumption of the role of leader. Why does he mistrust these tribes and their desire to stay in Transjordan? Why is it such a big deal that they might not enter to fight in Israel? Is there something about the twelve tribes presenting a united front?

Moses’ first comment to the Gadites and the Reubenites, in Numbers 32:7 is to ask “why will you turn the minds of the Israelites from crossing into the land that the Eternal has given you?” He doesn’t trust the two groups of people to just stay in Transjordan themselves. Rather, Moses believes that they will take other people or whole tribes with them, meaning he must be very cautious. Because of this, Moses reminds them that this is exactly the same behavior that their fathers exhibited when sent to survey the land in Numbers 13 and 14. They turned their backs on the land and then subsequently turned the minds of the rest of the Israelites.

In addition, Moses sees the motives of the Reubenites and the Gadites as what they truly are: purely economic in nature, says Isaac Arama, writing in the 15th century. He continues on that Moses therefore does not apologize for what might be seen as over-reacting because he didn’t. Fearful for the future of the Jewish people, Moses must consider everyone in his decisions, not just these particular tribes. He is aware that these tribes have a share in the land and must not forsake it. The love of the land and the material possessions associated with it took hold of the Reubenites and the Gadites, making them forget their obligation to the people.

However, they do not forget this obligation. Once reminded that they will “bring calamity upon all the people” if they turn away from God again (Num 32:15), they stepped forward and took responsibility for their actions, making an oath to help the rest of the people going to settle the land of Israel. Of course, the Torah would not be Torah without a few more curveballs. When the people, in the next verse, recognize what Moses is saying, they say they will build pens for their sheep and towns for their children. Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 22:9) suggests that by putting their cattle before their children, they will not find blessing from their wealth. Therefore, we see that these tribes will still suffer from settling in Transjordan, because they put such emphasis on their material goods!

In the end, this oath swearing and Moses’ repetition of the oath (Moses repeats the oath back to the two tribes, changing it slightly to invoke the name of God and adding a conditional statement (see Numbers 32:22-23)), demonstrate to the reader the idea of conditional contracts. Halacha felt this was very important and made sure to include aspects of it in the Shulchan Aruch, posited by Rabbi Meir.  This sets up four conditions that must be upheld in order to make the contract valid. These conditions are: 1) it must be stated twice as both a positive and negative, 2) the positive must come first, 3) the condition, the “if,” must come before the consequence, the “what” and 4) the condition must be fulfillable. This being used as the foundational circumstance that brought about conditional statements, we see just how important this situation was. Although it needed to be handled tenderly, it was eventually resolved and brought to light, with both parties satisfied with the conclusion.

In many ways, this is just another example of how Moses serves as leader to the people, channeling God and attempting to do the best he can with the time and circumstances he has. He demonstrates that he must treat everyone and every situation objectively, while also looking at the greater picture of where he is and what needs to happen for the success of the Jewish people.  We see that Moses knows how important the land of Israel is and ensures that some selfish behavior does not cause the entire people to lose this birthright. Moses serves as a valiant leader, as a conduit for God, and handles this situation with fairness and equanimity.

May our Shabbat too be filled with a sense of fairness, where we understand the greater circumstances around us, while we simultaneously take time to deal with each individual situation we face. May we be strong and persuasive leaders like Moses, knowing what is right and what is important.