Behalotecha - It's the Feeling that Counts

Behalotecha - It's the Feelings that Count:  There is a great story in the Talmud (Berachot 34a) about a time when someone in the study hall of Rabbi Eliezer led the prayers very quickly and the students complained he should go slower.  

Rabbi Eliezer said to them, "don't you know the part in this week’s Parshah of Behalotecha, when Moses prayed to God on behalf of his sister Miriam? All he said was 'God please heal her.'  A quick prayer sufficed, the same with the prayers today."  

Another time, someone else led services, but was very slow and the students complained again to Rabbi Eliezer that this one should go faster.  

However, Rabbi Eliezer in this case reminded the students, "Moses was on Mt. Sinai for forty days and nights, don't worry, however long it is, it won't be that long!"

The lesson here is twofold.  First, our prayers may be long or short, but if they have kavannah, if they have intention, then they may very well be sufficient.  But second and even more important, is having the discernment, the thoughtfulness, to recognize that sometimes situations are different and require different approaches.  

We know this is the case in our story from Rabbi Eliezer's words and actions.  Who was it that Rabbi Eliezer had in mind with what he said?  The person leading services and that person's standing in the community.  Could you imagine how it would feel if the rabbi in either story had criticized the prayer-leader, taking the side of the other students against that person?  How humiliating!  Rabbi Eliezer, however, is able to quickly and cleverly teach a valid lesson to his complaining students (about kavannah in prayer) while at the same time subtly teaching them the lesson of respect for other people, also.  

I hope we can be equally sensitive to Rabbi Eliezer's lessons about how to pray and how to treat people.  

Shabbat Shalom!

Nasso - Nazirites vs. Negotiators

Nasso – "Nazirites vs. Negotiators:"  We live in a world today of nazirites.  Not actual nazirites as in the Torah portion this week; people who swear off wine and cutting their hair and maintaining a high level of purity, but people who get too focused on their own saintliness, their own rightness, at the expense of the rest of the world.

Judaism makes room for the nazirite, and throughout Jewish history there have been all sorts of variations on the idea of perfecting oneself – from the Hasidic tradition to the mussar tradition.  And while none of these completely pulls the person from society, equally none of them keeps the person in the midst of society, making the hard, messy, dirty choices that society requires to keep functioning.  That is why Judaism rejects as an ideal the nazirite and why the Torah even insists such a person brings an offering of atonement after their nazirite period ends. 

The ideal person is the rabbinic sage of ancient times.  Enmeshed in the world, seeking to make the words of Torah, already ancient in rabbinic times, meaningful and alive in the new circumstances in which they lived.  Those rabbis often supported themselves through other sorts of work and were actively engaged with their fellow Jews and non-Jews in real ways.  And they still sought to improve the world and make it better.  They just weren’t fanatics about it.

We need more people like that.  Those willing to compromise.  Those willing to see how others live.  Those willing to get their hands dirty.  It is all too easy to retreat to a corner of ideological purity like the nazirite does, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.  But you are no longer engaging in the world when you do that.  Meeting people where they are, even if you don’t like it, that is how things get done.

Bamidbar - Life’s Journey

Bamidbar - Life’s Journey:   The Book of Numbers starts with a census, in essence an accounting of each solitary person in the people Israel.  This group of individuals becomes something more, something unified at Mt Sinai, that place you find in the 

the wilderness (which is where you are when you are a solitary person, someone “alone”) and brings that people together into a relationship of love - God’s love and their love for each other as a people.   From their they build a house and find a home - the Tabernacle and ultimately the Land of Israel.  There are many failures and challenges along the way but in the end, held together by that experience at Sinai and the giving of the Torah, they are able to go forward and face it all.  

As we read the start of Numbers and then move into Shavuot, the holiday of giving of the Torah, we have the chance to relive and recommit to our part in this story that mirrors and guides our lives’ stories, where we struggle to find relationships and make our homes - whatever they may look like - but like our ancestors, we will be strengthened and guided by our commitment to Torah.  

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

Bechukotai - What a Few Can Do

Parshat Bechukotai: “What a Few Can Do” – Whenever we get to this parshah I always enjoy the bad math employed to show just how successful the Jews will be in defeating their enemies, should they heed the will of God:

וְרָדְפוּ֙ מִכֶּ֤ם חֲמִשָּׁה֙ מֵאָ֔ה וּמֵאָ֥ה מִכֶּ֖ם רְבָבָ֣ה יִרְדֹּ֑פוּ וְנָפְל֧וּ אֹיְבֵיכֶ֛ם לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם לֶחָֽרֶב׃

“And five of you shall chase one hundred, and one hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.”

The message of the verse is that just as the ability of the 100 grows exponentially to combat the 10,000 – up from the 5 against 100 – so too does our community, the more united it is, gain in power and ability to overcome those who do not, for whatever reason it may be, stand with us.

Sadly, this is a message all the more necessary today in the face of rising antisemitism that cannot be denied and in a world all the more divided and contemptuous. 

The parshah is encouraging us, that even a few can do a lot – can influence dozens each, and that if enough of us are working together, we can reach even more. 

The bad math I think is there precisely to remind us just how powerful we can be.  Let us be the ones who stand up to hate, disagree without malice, and multiply the impact we make for good in the world around us!

Kedoshim - Holiness All Around

Parshat Kedoshim – “The Meaning of Holiness:”  People don’t like to hear it much less think this way, but I tend to believe it is true that we should expect life not to be particularly easy or happy or fulfilling, at least such things shouldn’t be taken as the norm.  If we don’t expect ease and comfort, we prepare ourselves to really enjoy and be grateful for all the good stuff that does happen when nothing says we should have any at all.

In this week’s portion in which we are told, “be holy for the Lord your God is holy” a similar question confronts us in trying to understand what this says to us.  Here we are, human beings, living our lives, doing our thing, what does it mean to have to be holy?  Holiness gets associated with synagogues and prayer books and lots of prayers and things that aren’t “normal life.”

  

Perhaps, we would be better served as thinking of ourselves and the world as all being holy, that holiness is in fact the default setting, and that the interruptions are all the mundane and seemingly “non-holy” things we fill our day with, and not the other way around.

What would this vantage point show us?  Much like with our opening example which would teach us to appreciate the good when it comes because we may end up having a lot of bad, the “everything is holy” view would allow us to see the real human connections, the real transcendent moments, the real presence of the divine, in all moments and everything we do.  Everything would become more beautiful, more meaningful, more special, more holy, in other words.  Rather than trying to squeeze enough holiness to sustain us from the occasional or even frequent trip to synagogue, we could instead find it everywhere and at all times, nourishing and fortifying our souls with that which makes life alive. 

“Be holy” we are told – perhaps we already are!

Acharei Mot – After Death, Congregants & Rabbis

Acharei Mot – “After Death, Congregants & Rabbis” - The parshah’s name this week couldn’t be more apt “after death.”  It refers to the deaths of Aaron’s sons the priest Nadav and Avihu, and it refers in our time to Yom HaShoah which was this week, but also to the murder of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, HY’D, who died last Shabbat at the end of Passover when her synagogue, the Chabad House of Poway, CA was attacked by shooter.  She died saving the life of her rabbi, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein.   That shook me. 

The idea of a congregant dying for her rabbi has filled my head since hearing of it.  To me, it is not the way it should be.  God forbid the situation should ever arise, but if it were to, I’ve felt it must be the other way around.  You’re here to help and guide your people and to care for them. 

I’m moved to share a story with you that has shaped my thinking on this matter.  When I was a young and new rabbi, I had a colleague who sat on the Rabbinical Assembly Bet Din in Los Angeles named Rabbi Henry Kraus.  As I taught Introduction to Judaism, I took many candidates for conversion before the Bet Din and got to know Rabbi Kraus because of it.  He was in his nineties, very sharp, and he himself had been a young, single rabbi in his late twenties just like I was then, in Hungary in the 1940s.  I got a kick of hearing about the large parsonage house the community insisted he live in, including a housekeeper, and how negotiations for his contract sounded just like the things we had to deal with, too. 

Rabbi Kraus also told of what happened to his congregation when the Nazis took control of Hungary late in World War II.  Hungary had been an ally to Nazi Germany but had treated its Jews differently than had been the case elsewhere in Europe.  When the Germans took over the country as it sought to exit the war independent of the other Axis Powers, all the Jews were quickly rounded up to be sent to their deaths. 

The congregation had the ability to save their beloved rabbi and help him escape, but Rabbi Kraus decided he would stay with them.  Sure enough, he was loaded onto a truck to be taken away.  As it happened, his parents, who were still living, had yet to be taken and he knew they were likely to make their escape.  Thinking quickly, he wrote on a postcard her had with them to their address with a brief note, “went with my congregation” – pinned a few pengo bills to it and tossed it over the truck to a passing Hungarian girl hoping she’d deliver it.  Then the went to Auschwitz. 

He showed me the postcard, which had been duly delivered to his parents who had been able to flee and who gave it back to him when he returned after the war.  You could even see the two holes on it where the pin had been.  That to me, was what a rabbi’s dedication to his congregation should look like. 

But Lori Gilbert-Kaye’s story doesn’t contradict this lesson, it adds a beautiful new realization to it.  That the rabbi need not be only the protecting parent.  Perhaps even that’s not the best thing, and that it spoke to me as much as it did because of my age at the time, though the story still moves me.  Again, God forbid it ever happen, but we, rabbis and congregants, are all in this together – equally committed to each other and to Jewish tradition and its continuing legacy; equally full of a desire to be brave and loving and courageous and do the right thing. 

Let it not be a tragedy then that proves it for us.  Let us instead find ways of spreading and strengthening Judaism in our community working hand in hand as the way in which we honor these stories, these deaths, and the many brave souls among our people.

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat HaGadol and Seder Prep

As the meal approaches on Seder night, we read the following - Rabban Gamaliel states, “Whoever has not referred to these three matters on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation, and these are they: the Passover [offering], unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. ‘Passover’—because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt. ‘Unleavened bread’—because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt. ‘Bitter herbs’—because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.”

How do we cover this obligation?  Other than actually reading the above passage, we have the Maggid section of the Haggadah, where the story of the Exodus and the holiday of Passover is told. 

An excellent custom for this Shabbat before Passover, Shabbat Hagadol is to read the Maggid section of the Passover Haggadah in advance of the first Seder.   This preview of the ritual meal offers a way to deepen our immersion in liberation consciousness. When given serious attention beyond the Seder itself, the Passover Haggadah offers us a message for transforming the way we eat and the way we conduct ourselves all year long.

Indeed, putting even a little effort into the service we will run alongside all the effort that goes into cooking and cleaning, can help us express in terms meaningful today our gratitude for our redemption from bondage and the start of our journey to a promised land.