The Rest is Commentary

January 2023

Vayera Drash by Alexander Fellman

וַיְחַזֵּ֤ק יְהוָה֙ אֶת־לֵ֣ב פַּרְעֹ֔ה

But Hashem hardened pharaoh’s heart.

 

There is a concept among Christians called the unforgivable sin, the sin that God will never allow repentance for. In most churches, it is the denial of the holy spirit; tantamount to rejection not just of God, but of God’s grace and his willingness to provide said grace.

Judaism has no such generally accepted sin. T’shuva, repentance, is always available to those who seek it. On Yom Kippur, we gather to both seek t’shuva and praise Hashem for his offering it to us.

So, why was Pharaoh’s heart hardened? Moshe Rabeinu gave Pharaoh every opportunity to repent, but Hashem told him from the beginning that not only would Pharaoh reject him, but that Hashem would harden Pharaoh. Pharaoh, then, was forced to disobey the will of the Lord, and to bring calamity upon Mitzraim.

Why?

There are two things we might look to.

First, our Rabbis teach us that every man is free to do that which is good. Even those who are condemned for the worst sins may turn aside the evil decree, as the book of Jonah shows, should they hear the call to redemption and choose to accept it. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah might have been undone, had but ten good people been there, and who knows but that had Avraham Avinu continued to bargain, one good man might have been enough!

Hashem might make our yetzer hara stronger for a time, but we are always able to prove ourselves stronger than our worst inclinations. And even when our hearts are hardened, the right thing to do remains the right thing to do. Pharoah could have ignored his hatred, and his fear, and the coldness of his heart, and still have released the Jews.

Second, for T’shuva to have meaning, it must be sincere. We are not promising to do better in future, because we must always do what is right, promises or not. We are sincerely repenting our sins past, expressing our regret for the sins themselves and the weakness that prompts them.

What does Pharaoh do when he finally does release the Jews, and Hashem’s will is no longer upon him? Does he truly repent his evil deeds? Or acknowledge their evil? No, he gathers an army and pursues the Jews, thinking only to bring the Jews back to their chains.

Pharaoh’s repentance is but a sham, if he repents at all. Were he to have simply given the Jews their freedom, we might have thought him a better man than he was, and praise him for his mercy. By making it harder for him to incline to what is right, he was forced to reveal himself for his true self.

As to why the Egyptians must suffer for the sins of their rulers… Were the Egyptians so noble that they must not? We suffered for the sins of our kings, and so have many others besides, because when a King sins before his people, and his people speak not to him of righteousness, they show Hashem they fear their king more than they love truth; a king is not, or was not in those days, a man but was also their first representative and the embodiment of the nation, and as when we suffered our kings to sin we were punished, so too were the Egyptians.

The lesson is simple. Do what is right. Even when you are not inclined to it. Our great teacher, Hillel the Elder , taught from the book of Vayikra: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

We are given great power both to do what is right and to learn what righteousness is. May we all be so fortunate as to do so.

 

The Bones of Joseph

January 2023

Vayehi Drash by Howard Streicher

The different themes to pursue in Parsha Vayehi (“And he lived”) give us the opportunity for integrating the past into the present.  Yet, accepting the value of Torah without questioning the literal truth of the events described in Genesis is not easy for everyone.  Today we may look at several examples where we may happily do both. 

Jacob in adopting Joseph’s children says “I had not thought it possible I would see your face and now God has let me see even your children.“ But why does Joseph allow his children to be returned to Jacob?

Rabbi Sachs and recently Stephen Mitchell, poet translator and author of “Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness” point out that Joseph doesn’t just forgive or forget but accepts fully that both he and his brothers played their parts according to G-d’s will so both forgiveness and repentance are a form of faith 

The blessings Jacob offers his children are enigmatic and difficult to interpret but the one explanation I see clearly is creating the geopolitical reality of later times as Joseph rejects Leah’s older children Reuven, Simon, Levi in favor of Judah who became the dominant force in the south and shifting his right-hand blessing to Ephraim who was the dominant force in the North. 

And Johnathan Sacks also points out that sometimes it is ok to lie to alter the past — as the brothers say to Joseph, “Our father said to please forgive the crimes of your brothers.” Joseph responds “Don’t be afraid. Even if you meant to do evil, God meant it for good.”

The Sages derived a principle from this text. Mutar le-shanot mipnei ha-shalom: “It is permitted to change the facts for the sake of peace.” How far to take this is a good subject for Talmudic discussion.

Now we have Joseph as a prince of Egypt having wealth and privilege. With a different narrative he could have separated from his brothers but he either chose or was forced to be buried not inside a pyramid but in Malpelach in Sechem and to have his children adopted by Jacob back into the tribes.  Whether he was assimilated or not, Joseph recognized that a pyramid was not the path to eternal life.   

There is a midrash: On the night the Jews were about to leave Egypt, they realized they could not leave without one precious thing: the bones of Joseph. An elderly woman, Serach Bat Asher a very popular but mysterious Midrashic character in Genesis, mentions among those going down to Egypt and again returning with Moses at the steppes of Moab —- led Moses to the Nile to where Joseph’s bones were hidden. The site had otherwise been forgotten over time.  Can you blame them?  Given the situation they were in who knew they would ever be needed?

But why were Joseph’s bones so precious?

Recovering Joseph’s bones perhaps forces his descendants to remember their identity and at the same time creates this ancient text which has been studied from generation to generation that lets us identify with the “our history.” So, what is it that is passed on from generation to generation and gives us substance to our identity?  Joseph’s bones and the genealogy they represent or Joseph’s story which we read and discuss over and over?

On a Sabbath in March 1349 CE, the Jewish community of Erfurt, Germany was wiped out in a pogrom possibly motivated by financial gain – much as the growing wealth and numbers of Jacob’s descendants provoked the Egyptians.  The archbishop of Mainz, who had granted Jews the right to live and work there restored the Jewish community and it was rebuilt 5 years later drawing Jews from across Europe who were perhaps convinced it would never happen again. They flourished for 100 years until 1454 when the town council revoked the rights forcing them to leave. The city built a granary on top of the Jewish cemetery— whose bodies remained undisturbed until 2013 when an excavation of the site found 60 skeletons most with their legs still pointing east toward Jerusalem.

Professor Shai Carmi of Hebrew University along with  David Reich, leading expert on ancient DNA, were very pessimistic about the possibility of studying the remains  given sensitivity surrounding Jewish racial genetics  and prohibitions on disturbing the dead.

A way was found by using loose teeth to extract DNA. 33 whole genome sequences were recovered and my sources, two articles, “Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century” in the journal Cell and a discussion of the background “Meeting the Ancestors” in Science were published in December 2022.

Where did these Jews of Erfurt come from and how are we today related to them? There is no ancient DNA available yet from the biblical past. So any direct connection is speculative but overall is consistent with a history of the Jewish people descending from ancient  Israelites and their dispersion throughout the old world.  We have known from disease-associated genes in modern Ashkenazi populations – Tay Sachs for example – that occur with preserved identical mutations, stemmed from a single genetic event trapped in a genetic population bottleneck in medieval Europe. 

The Erfurt studies suggest that this population was limited to less than 1000 – possibly less than 500 hundred – individuals or fewer at one time — and now we know that this small group of founding ancestors went back several hundred years to about 900 CE.   Also, in the Erfurt population mitochondrial DNA passed on only from mothers suggests one woman was the ancestor of 30% of the population.  Another surprise was that there was more genetic diversity than we see today with a separate identifiable group— related but with a stronger mid-eastern ancestry. This small community mixed and later expanded to become the genetically more homogenous Ashkenazi population of approximately 10 million today. Doesn’t this scenario sound similar to Jacob’s founding role and the burgeoning population explosion in Egypt where a small group of 70 related individuals with one male and 4 female ancestors expanded to perhaps several hundred thousand people over 300 years?

Bottlenecks call to mind catastrophes and collapse such as massacres or discrimination and persecution – all the horrible things that prevent people from marrying outside their community. Common wisdom had suggested that the cause of this medieval contraction were the pogroms, black death, or Crusades of the 14th century but the evidence from Erfurt and the Joseph story itself suggests a different narrative of a small community prospering expanding and then being persecuted and finally redeemed. And in describing the Jews of Erfurt we could be describing the Jews of Joseph’s Egypt. 

As the authors in “Meeting the Ancestors” asserted, “The truth is the Jews of medieval Germany settled there by invitation, were welcomed there when they came and were integrated into medieval German space—and all the while were a religious, and sometimes persecuted, other.” 

Before I finish, I need to point out that there are some deep and serious matters in studying genetic ancestry, and not just for Jews.

First, tracing ancestry or lineage of a person or group identifies who had ancestors in common possibly relationships among groups with common ancestors, which may have separated and sometimes later come back together. They are plausible statistical recreations of the past.  The variations in no way define character, intelligence, ethical values much less racial characteristics. 

I thought a lot about the importance of how we answer these questions   – genetic difference among people and groups cannot be ignored but misuse and misunderstanding to create a sense of cultural moral superiority and exclusion has led too often to tragedy.  

On the other hand, studying Dr. David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here can be a lot of fun. An example that I came across: 

“The Samaritans are a population historically well identified since at least the 4th century BCE and possibly before the Assyrian invasion 722.  They define themselves as the descendants of tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. A 2004 study comparing  Y-DNA and DNA-mt  concludes that significant similarities exist between paternal lines of Jews and Samaritans, but the maternal lines are different.” Now with the Torah portion today this made perfect sense to me.    Ephraim and Manasseh inherited their Y chromosomes from Joseph that was shared with all the brothers but their mitochondrial DNA from their mother, the Egyptian Asenath rather than the sisters Leah and Rachael. So they had a different maternal ancestor not shared with the other tribes. How could the results be otherwise?

“All the myths we create, all the symbolism and stories we make are always rooted in something real— fragments of the past,” Kristin Armstrong-Oma professor of archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Norway.

And one day the bones of Joseph may be found and who can say what will be discovered? 

Good Shabbos

 

Justice and Mercy

February 2023

Parsha Bo drash by Stan Satz

Parasha Bo (Chapter 10 through the 16th verse of Chapter 13)

I was in graduate school at Kent State University in the iconoclastic early 1970’s. At that time, one of my non-Jewish English graduate professors, while discussing Christian meditative poetry, authoritatively said that the Hebrew God is a belligerent, bloodthirsty, and barbaric tyrant who would ruthlessly persecute and massacre anyone who opposed him, pagan or Israelite. I was shell-shocked and outraged by such a gratuitous generalization at best and at worst a deeply ingrained anti-Semitism.

I, on the other hand, had always believed that the God of the Hebrew Bible was not a bully or a monster: his wrath was justified, and his justice was leavened with mercy. But I didn’t dare contradict my biased professor, fearing to antagonize him and thus jeopardize my grade.
What was the most heinous act that he cited as proof that our ancient God was a homicidal villain? The final plague in Parasha Bo: God’s annihilation of the first-born Egyptians, whether or not they were intimately involved in perpetuating the slavery of the Hebrews, whether they were royalty or rabble. How can anyone excuse such apocalyptic overkill? It is a crime against humanity personally and maliciously carried out by the malevolent God of the Old Testament.
At face value, my professor makes a strong case against a heartless, vengeful God. But if I had another chance to debate this controversial issue with him, this is how I would respond.

First of all, for countless generations, Pharaoh’s empire had depended economically on the slave labor of the Hebrew people. There is no way that he will free them, as his convoluted crafty bargaining and negotiations with Moses indicate. God doesn’t need to harden Pharaoh’s heart—it is already plagued by pride, calcified against meaningful compromise or retreat. Pharaoh will not give up his power at any cost—after all, he is a deity incarnate, invincible.
Moses realizes that Pharaoh will not relent even after the battery of afflictions that his kingdom has had to endure. No matter what horror God wreaks on Egypt, Moses knows that Pharaoh cannot be trusted to liberate God’s Chosen People.

Even the last plague, the slaughter of all first-born Egyptians, ultimately fails to convince Pharaoh that he must give in to Moses’ urgent demands. For Pharaoh, as we will see in the following parasha, reneges on his pledge to enable the Hebrews to journey to the Promised Land, culminating in the utter demise of his military forces in the turbulence of the Reed Sea.
While God’s destructive power prevails, Pharaoh, not God, is responsible for the collateral damage. In fact, according to Talmudic lore in a time-honored Midrash (Megilla 10), God doesn’t gloat over the deaths of the doomed Egyptians: he grieves for them; he laments their fate. When the angels begin to celebrate the decimation of the Egyptians forces, God immediately rebukes them for being so callous: ‘“How dare you sing for joy when my creatures are dying? Are these not my children also?” This regret is why during the Passover Seder we are required to spill drops of wine (representing tears) from our second cupful: to remind us that because others perished, our ancestral joy in miraculously escaping oppression should be tempered with loving-kindness for all humanity, with chesed.

To further rebut my professor, almighty God freely offers rehabilitation as well as retribution for evildoers. According to the Bo Haftorah reading from Jeremiah, the Babylonians are predicted to ravage Egypt and disperse its inhabitants throughout the Middle East. But eventually, the displaced Egyptians will return to their ancient homeland, just as the exiled Israelites will repopulate their beloved Promised Land. And according to Isaiah, after God will unleash his righteous wrath against the idolatrous Egyptians with an all-consuming famine resulting in a disastrous civil war, they will turn to the Lord, and He will respond to their pleas and heal them. In fact, “The Lord will bless them, saying, blessed be Egypt my people” (Isaiah 19:25).
Regardless of the catastrophes that may await the enemies of Israel or the stiff-necked, backsliding Israelites themselves, God takes no pleasure in meting out punishment: “As I live, says God, I do not wish for the death of the wicked, but for the wicked to repent of their way, so that they may live” (Ezekiel 33:11).

I have not had any recent revelations from God. However, a few years ago when I was picking up gobs of litter from the beach at my home in Emerald Isle, North Carolina, I, without any preamble, heard a booming voice quote the end of the 23rd Psalm, with justice replacing goodness: “Justice and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” What an epiphany! Whether this pronouncement was merely a neurological misfiring or a hotline from God, I immediately began sobbing with joy. Justice counterbalanced with mercy: a mantra for all seasons. That would be my response to anyone who sees only God’s intermittent cruelty, not his abiding compassion, his rachamim.
In retrospect, I wonder if my professor continued to adhere to his gross caricature of the God of the Torah. If he still maintained that distorted view, I have a belated admonition for him from Deuteronomy, Chapter 10, verse 16, a command often reiterated in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.

“Circumcise…the foreskin of your heart.”

Amen.

 

Eternal Flame and Sacrifice

April 2023

Tetzaveh Drash by Daniel Koster

Why does God want all this? This week, God instructs the Israelites to maintain  an eternal oil lamp, to construct extremely intricate (that is, expensive) robes for the  priests, and to sacrifice a ram on the altar of the Tabernacle. The eternal flame is a  familiar symbol carried on by modern synagogues, and we expect our rabbis to look  nice, though maybe not twelve precious stones arranged in a grid. But just imagine  if instead of distributing challah and your choice of wine or juice, we slaughtered a  whole ram right here. Blood on the altar, blood on the earlobes and the toes, blood even  on the intricate robes with the precious stones. This was the kind of hands-on worship  God expected from our ancestors.  

Three thousand years later the most gruesome part of our worship is how long it  takes. Since the construction of the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant was captured  by the Philistines in the book of Samuel, the Babylonians in the book of Kings, and the  Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and since then its whereabouts are unknown. Without  the Ark, we cannot conduct the rituals we were commanded, and so we worship through  song, prayer, and fasting. The people in the time of Moses might have predicted that as  soon as Israel stopped practicing these rituals we would lose our connection with God,  and be destroyed or assimilated.  

Were they right? God no longer gives us specific instructions. Many times has  our number been greatly reduced by our enemies. And we struggle to maintain the  essence of our tradition against dilution in the culture of the nations. Is this because  God has turned his back on us? On the other hand, never in history have Jews been  safer and more able to practice their faith than today. We are free to maintain  synagogues, museums, and community centers around the world. And our people have  successfully defended our homeland from over seven decades of political and physical  attack. Never in history has the world been as wealthy, safe, and free as it is now, even  in the poorest and most dangerous places, and Jews have as great a share in these  blessings as anyone else.  

Unless we are blind to the amazing fortune we have inherited, how can we  believe God has turned his back on us? Despite our sins, we remain blessed. What  then was the purpose of animal sacrifice? Like all the commandments, I believe  sacrifice is not for God’s benefit, but for ours. It may be that the story gives so much  detail about the priestly robes not because that’s the robe you or I need to make, but  because a uniform represents the specific role life demands each of us fulfill. We are  instructed about sacrifice not because that’s the sacrifice we need to make, but because  life will demand we sacrifice something that is most precious to us. You or I might have  to sacrifice a bad habit, a relationship, or the opportunity to do our favorite thing. Drugs  actually are an effective way to make ourselves feel good, but life demands we sacrifice  them for alertness and presence. Sleeping with many partners is popular for a reason,  but life demands we sacrifice this for a deeper relationship with just one partner. We all  have someone we’d like to murder, but you get the idea. Once a ram is slaughtered, it’s  gone. But the sacrifices modern people must make can be undone in an instant, if the  opportunity emerges. 

God spoke to Moses and explained exactly what sacrifices needed to be made.  We may think we are not so lucky, and yet, if any one of us earnestly asks this question:  what one thing am I doing that I know is hurting me… 

The first time I heard that question the answer came to me immediately, as clear  as any voice from heaven. And unless you are the only perfect person here, you  probably heard an answer too. We all have a ram to sacrifice. Whatever success I have  today, I attribute to my decision to listen to the answer and stop doing the stupid thing I  knew I shouldn’t be doing. Am I done? No, I know what stupid things I’m still doing. I’ll  stop eventually. See, the faithful among the Israelites didn’t stress about giving up their  choicest animals because they had faith that if they gave up their animals now, God  would ensure they had enough animals to sacrifice in the future. They are role models  in this respect—the rest of us have imperfect faith, and we hesitate to make the  sacrifices, even when we feel life demands them. We believe God will replace the things  we sacrifice with something better, but we don’t always believe it enough to make the  jump. Don’t feel bad; that’s what makes life so interesting. 

I have heard from a number of Jews lately about the rising tide, the oncoming  wave of antisemitism. I am told that pockets of hate exist throughout our communities,  committing hateful acts and endangering our people. And of course there will always be  hate. The Jews are a fine people, but we can’t please everyone. Atheism is the fastest  growing religious identity in the world—even God himself can’t please everyone. Yet for  every public utterance of hate, for every act of violence against us, the public outcry is  far greater. When else in history have our communities and governments had our back  to the extent they do now?  

This week commemorates one instance when someone tried to wipe out the  Jews and failed. Yet our tradition does not tell us to grieve that an attempt was made,  nor to fret that someone will soon try again. Our tradition is to be joyful, to celebrate that  we are still here. And we are still here. If our enemies ever persecute us again, let us  not be the ones who say, we didn’t know how good we had it. We are living the dream of  our ancestors, to live in a time when we are safe and free. Want to keep it that way?  Here’s what worked for our ancestors: make the sacrifices God commands you to make.  Fulfill the role he commands you to fulfill. And keep the eternal light of hope, faith, and  gratitude burning. 

 

Dancing to Praise God

April 2023

Haftorah Commentary for Sh’mini by Stan Satz

In the Torah, the most familiar example of dancing to praise God is found in Exodus Chapter 15 verse 20: Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses, choreographs and orchestrates the iconic scenario in which the Israelite women commemorate in dance and song their freedom from Egyptian bondage. Dance is a motif even in the calamitous Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 31 verse 4. After the prophet so despairingly warns the sinfully ingrained Judeans about the malignant onslaught awaiting them and their consequent exile to Babylon, he foresees their eventual return to Jerusalem; and to celebrate their deliverance, they will exuberantly worship God through dance: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”

According to our Haftorah reading for this Shabbat, King David ecstatically dances for Adonai while he and his devout retinue accompany the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. “So David went and brought up the ark of God… to the city of David with rejoicing. And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal. And David danced and skipped before the Lord with all his might…So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the Shofar.”

King David’s rambunctious revelry dismays his prudish wife Michal, King Saul’s daughter. She finds his antics appalling, inappropriate, unseemly, and utterly despicable. She sarcastically fumes: “Didn’t the King of Israel do himself honor today—exposing himself in the sight of the slave girls of his subjects, as one of the riffraff might expose himself.” But David ignores her concerns. He is totally enraptured in the procession, continuing to dance deliriously, leaping and whirling. God approves of David’s unbridled devotion, but He finds Michal’s carping so egregious that He makes her barren. (Second Samuel, Chapter 6, excerpts from verses 12 to 23). In Psalms 30, 149, and 150, David himself proclaims how rejuvenating, how miraculous it is to dance for God. Here is verse 11 of Psalm 30: “You have turned my laments into dancing; you undid my sackcloth and girded me with joy.” The initial verses of Psalm 149 proclaim: Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song in the assembly of the godly. Let Israel rejoice in his Maker; let the children of Zion exult in their King! Let them praise His name with dancing.”

And in these excerpts from Psalm 150, the last one that David composed, dancing is one of the mainstays in worshipping God: “Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in the sky, his mighty stronghold. Praise him for his mighty deeds…Praise him with blasts of the horn; praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with loud-crashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

For David, dancing is one of the stepping stones in experiencing God’s glory. But for most of my life, such blatant emotion was off limits. During the 1960’s, I attended Temple Israel in Brookline, Massachusetts. The renowned rabbi, Roland B. Gittlesohn, a darling of the ultra-liberal wing of the Reform Movement, conducted services with strict Germanic decorum. His forte was dry deductive reasoning; his sermons were masterpieces of formal rhetoric. Selections read from the siddur were exclusively routine, somber, sober recitations. During the musical interludes, it was unheard of for any congregant to undulate, clap, or God forbid, prance about. Any kind of spontaneity was taboo. Instead of joyful song, the professional choir robotically performed obscure, dissonant music. I often imagined that the singers, repressing their personal feelings, were robed in straitjackets, while the undemonstrative, stuffy cantor chanted bland renditions of traditional tunes. Years later, when I was a frequent lay leader at Temple B’nai Sholem, my Reform temple in New Bern, North Carolina, I tried to enliven the Shabbat service. But the congregation was not receptive to change. The only time I mixed it up was in the middle of Oseh Shalom. In between the verses that ended in Shalom, I unexpectedly shouted out Shalom! I feared that there might be an uprising because of my perceived misguided enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly, no one joined me; but at least I felt uplifted by my bit of Jewish evangelical fervor. A few years ago I joined Temple Emmanu-El. Entertained and edified by charismatic Rabbi Ken, my soul flourished. His unconventional Shabbat services, accompanied by his rollicking keyboard, were resoundingly festive, especially when they featured dance-like Klesmer variations and jazzy riffs. Rabbi Ken’s vibrant, entrancing music inspired me and so many other congregants to new heights of adoration for Adonai.

And at the end of the service, while we all sang Debbie Friedman’s rendition of Tefillat HaDerech, the Traveler’s Prayer, everyone held hands and tenderly moved side by side as one with the music.

After Rabbi Ken left Temple Emmanu-El, Shabbat services, whether on zoom or in person, were an anti-climax. The mainstream interim rabbi’s down-to earth demeanor did not enrapture me. I longed for the life-enhancing moments of transcendence that Rabbi Ken had so blessedly provided.

But I wasn’t permanently stuck in the doldrums. The new rabbi at Temple Emmanu-El, Cheri Weiss, has reinvigorated our congregation. Rabbi Ken has a worthy successor. She too revels in unorthodox playfulness. As she rhapsodically chants some of the prayers, she claps her hands and rhythmically rotates her hips. To my delight, without preamble, some worshippers have even begun dancing in the aisles. As of now, I don’t have the courage to be so uninhibited, but I may break out of my comfort zone anytime.

And what about Sof Maʻarav? Here, I have found abundant and abiding passion for prayer. Watching Sandi (with swan-like grace) unselfconsciously dance is a treat. And then there is Gregg. He outdid himself a few weeks ago. While the congregation was singing a familiar melody, he jiggled about, did his patented soft-shoe routine, and then to the delighted amazement of all of us, he boogied outside for a moment and ever so reverently glided back (almost levitating with Talmudic agility) to the bema. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gregg is a frolicking descendant of King David himself. This Hebraic cavorting, carousing, and camaraderie in the sanctuary would have been anathema at the previous mainland temples that I attended and presided over. Bring it on! Sof has been a turning point for me. I will no longer sit passively in my seat during Shabbat services. I vow at least to tap my feet to the beat of the Jewish liturgy (Don has shown me how to do so ever-so adeptly). If King David were with us today, he would eagerly participate in Sof’s free style devotion to Torah. I would like to digress a bit. My daughter has written and performed many nondenominational religious songs. One of them from her CD Out of the Dark has these poignant lyrics: “Take my hand; I’ll try to follow. You know the dance far better than me; on my own I struggle, I stumble. I lose the beat, but the rhythm of your heart is all I need. I want to dance with you oh God in perfect harmony.”

The Dance Recording

Intimately dancing with God: What a sublime vision! Miriam and David unapologetically and unequivocally praised Adonai in exalted dance. They were attuned to the vibrant rhythm of God’s love for his people Israel. That should be our goal as well. Amen.

 

Tazria and Tzaraʻat

April 2023

Parshat Tazria Drash by Alexander Fellman

Good Shabbos, all. I’d like to start, as is my custom, with a little story: There is a council of Rabbis meeting, discussing a matter pertaining to the ritual impurity of an oven under very specific conditions of Kashrut; the details are not particularly important, as to the best of my recollection the circumstances would now be almost impossible to attain these days.

But anyway, all the Rabbis agree. All the Rabbis except one: Rabbi Eliezer the son of Hyrcanus, who says that not only is he correct, but he can prove it.

“If I am correct,” he says, loudly, “Then let this carob tree fly!”

And the carob tree flies.

“So? Nu?” Say the other Rabbis. “Is the law of God to be found in carob trees?”

“Very well! Then if I am correct, let the water flow backwards!”

And the water flows backwards.

And again, “Nu? So? We should be impressed by this?”

And finally, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus says, “I call upon the Almighty Himself, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to bear witness to my interpretation!”

And the heavens part, and from the heavenly throne comes a great voice that says “Eliezar ben Hyrcanus is entirely correct in interpretation of Halakha!”

And what do you think the Rabbis do?

You’re probably wrong.

The Rabbis tell Hashem, in a not particularly respectful manner, that as he gave the Torah at Mount Sinai to humanity to look after, and with it the Oral Torah for us to interpret it by, then it is no longer any concern of Hashem’s, and so he can take himself back to Heaven and they’re going to go ahead and go with the majority opinion, thank you very much.

And Hashem, chastened, departs. Presumably after telling Rabbi Eliezer, “Sorry, kid. I tried.” Because, as Hashem himself goes on to tell the Heavenly hosts… the Rabbis are right.

This story comes to us from the Talmud; it is both a statement of how our Rabbis have the right to make judgments on the law, and a bold claim for the righteousness of humanity in its ability to determine our own laws from the starting conditions.

Now. Why do I bring this up?

Today’s parsha, Tazria, is an unusual one. It is another in a long run of legal structures and strictures, in this case regarding purity. And there are two key aspects of purity concerned within it: The purity of a woman following her pregnancy, and the purity of one who is experiencing the disease Tzaraʻat, which we often, I think wrongly, translate as leprosy.

The issue of a woman’s pregnancy is brief and may be, I think, quickly disposed of: Let a pregnant woman bathe, have time to herself, and, oh yes, remember boys have to be circumcised.

It’s the question of Tzaraʻat that is interesting to me, and I’ll tell you why: Whether Tzaraʻat is leprosy or not, there is a treatment plan that I think we should go through.

First, the patient is examined by a competent authority. In Ancient Israel, and for much of the world for the longest time, that competent authority would be the nearest literate human being, probably a priest.

The patient is held under examination to see if certain set conditions arise. If not, then nothing happens.

And if the priest says “Oy vey, that’s Tzaraʻat!” then the person is sent outside of the camp or city to dwell in isolation until such time as he is healed, or dead, whichever happens first.

And that’s it.

Competent authority says you’re sick, and off you go until you’re better. Or not. Can’t have whatever’s wrong with you infecting everybody. Sorry.

Now, I am not going to get involved in politics, either now or three thousand years ago. I just wish to point out that that is not far from how we treat almost all potentially infectious diseases these days. The difference is that we now have specialists to determine whether or not someone is ill, and we now let people suffer their communicable diseases in their homes, because our homes are now far cleaner places with far easier access to water and so forth than our ancestors had.

Let’s circle back to the question of ritual purity. We often think of it in terms of ‘ritual’ and so forth, arbitrary rules and the like, that affect people who are just trying to live their lives. I think it’s important to focus on the ‘purity’.

Purity, in our religion, means cleanness. Spiritually and physically. And for the longest time, that was very hard to come by. It was something you had to work for. And Hakodesh Baruch hu, taking us as he found us, provided us with rules that he thought our ancestors could live by, that he thought we could keep. Not just in the grand things, but in the little things, too.

And because we are Jews, not Karaites, we believe in a living tradition; we believe that our rabbis have the power, as executors of the will of the last Sanhedrin, to look at our laws and say ‘No, now we know better.’

And so they do. And we hope they’re right.

Too often we think of Jewish law as stifling. As binding. I think it is important to see it as a liberating, beautiful thing, one where we are engaged not in following diktats from on high but in a conversation dating back centuries into the past and that will, I know, continue on for centuries into the future.

Or, because we’re Jews, an argument we’re having with our grandparents, and that our grandchildren will have with us.

Good Shabbos.

 

Written Torah, Oral Torah, and Atonement

May 2023

Behar–Bechukotai בְּהַר-בְּחֻקֹּתַי

Drash by Daniel Koster

Blessed were the Israelites in the time of Moses, for they knew the danger. The procedure for sacrifice is to place the offering on the altar, and wait for fire to come out from the presence of the Lord and consume the offering, a sign that the offering has been accepted. Aaron’s sons ignite their own offerings, and are themselves consumed by fire. I don’t know how many times I read this before understanding it. They are destroyed not because their offering was improper. Cain’s offer was rejected, but he was given the opportunity to correct himself. Aaron’s sons went too far when they presumed the acceptance of their sacrifice, when they attempted to cut the Lord out of the equation. Moses commands the bereft father and brothers, do not mourn. Do not tear your clothes or uncover your head. Your sons were wrong, and they got what was coming to them. For all of our sakes, you will keep your uniform proper and return to your duties. How many times do you think Aaron strayed from the righteous path after that? Blessed were these people, for they knew the might of the Lord. Where the Israelites had terrifying experience, we have stories. Even if any among us believe with whole heart that these events did happen to real people, we still require weekly and even daily reminders. We bind it on our hands and inscribe it on our doorposts. How many reminders do you think Aaron needed about the power of the Lord? 

This seems like a good time for a joke. A Missionary has travelled all the way to the North Pole to spread the good news to a previously uncontacted Inuit tribe. After the missionary tells the elders all about God and the Bible, the chief asks, “So what happens if I don’t accept your beliefs?” The missionary tells him he will suffer in hell forever. “So if we had not learned of your beliefs, would we still go to hell?” The missionary tells him no, because you did not know. The chief rises and cries: “Then why did you tell me?”

This week’s Parsha is the part where he tells us. “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments […] I will look with favor upon you, and make you fertile and multiply you; and I will maintain My covenant with you. […] But if you do not obey Me […] and you break My covenant, […] I will break your proud glory. I will make your skies like iron and your earth like copper […] I will loose wild beasts against you, and they shall bereave you of your children […] And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin.” 

Who says heaven and hell are places you go after you die? We are told that heaven and hell are right here on planet earth, and that our actions determine where we go. By this point in the torah we know the law, we know what we stand to gain if we obey, and what’s coming if we don’t. All we have to do is follow it. But we have not witnessed the wrath of God firsthand. Modern people only follow a fraction of the law. I recently attended some Chabad services and those guys are all in on their practice (except the ones who come just for the food), but even they excuse themselves from large sections of the Torah that are incompatible with the modern world. We observe the laws our lifestyle allows, and we commit the sins we can get away with.

As we know, there is the written torah, and the oral torah; none of which we modern people follow perfectly. Then there is the less discussed canon I like to call the Not Technically in the Torah but I’m Pretty Sure the Lord Would Not Be Too Happy About It, and we do that stuff all the time. These are the sins we can sort of convince ourselves are ok, because they’re not specifically forbidden. Maybe no one saw, and no one could attribute the consequences to you. And if we believe in anything at all, we have to believe these sins are leading us to the place with the swords and the wild beasts and the being scattered among the nations. This is why the missionary at the north pole is naive when he says there is no punishment if you don’t know the rules. Because the world before the law was the world of desolation and starvation and violence. That’s the default world for humans; the world that godless animals still live in. Bechukotai isn’t the lord threatening to do bad things to us if we neglect the law; The Lord is describing what life is like for people who do not follow the law. The Law is not a shackle holding us down; it’s our best bet against the terrible world we live in. 

So does the Lord hate us because we follow the law imperfectly? If he was like a human he might, because we sometimes hate people who won’t listen to us. It seems more likely to me, and more productive to believe, that the Lord loves us, and wants us to live well. My evidence: well, I know I haven’t been consumed in holy fire. Modern Jews seem to speak little about redemption, yet the Lord prophesies right here in the text: “When I […] have been hostile to them and have removed them into the land of their enemies, then at last shall their obdurate heart humble itself, and they shall atone for their iniquity. Then will I remember My covenant […], even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I the LORD am their God.”

Soon I set out across the vast and murderous Pacific. The ocean is always trying to kill us, and it has many weapons to use against us: storms, rust, fire, hostile ships, and even sharks. In a word, the ocean is a lot like hell, as described in this week’s parsha. Am I so sure of my good conduct that I know I am not sailing to my final judgement? Never. Have I so thoroughly exercised sin from my life, and atoned for my past, that I no longer fear the sea? Not even close. And if you reject the idea that the Lord should let anything bad happen to someone as sweet as me, remember that he alone has all the facts of the case. The good news is that atop the hell of the ocean, a good boat is a lot like heaven. A place of plenty, security, and community. I can only do my small part to keep it afloat. Unlike Aaron’s sons, I lack the self confidence to assume that my small contribution will be good enough. I can only remember this: if there were no second or third or nth chances, there would be no more humans. Each of us holds a standing invitation back to the covenant, to whatever extent we are willing. And each step we as individuals make toward the presence of the Lord is a step our people make toward the promised land.

 

Litany of Curses and Abundant Blessings

October 2023

Ki Tavo Drash by Stan Satz

A smattering of blessings but a heap of curses (all 98 of them) are specifically elaborated upon in Chapter 28 of Ki Tavo. First, Moses proclaims that if the Israelites rejoice in God’s covenant and abide by the commandments in the Torah, then they will luxuriate (physically and spiritually) in the land of milk and honey. Their blessings include abundant prosperity and supremacy over their foreign enemies.

Then comes the most terrifying litany of curses in the Hebrew Bible, an exhaustive array of horrors that will afflict the Israelites and their future generations if they disobey God, if they forsake the mosaic code: their Promised Land will be a pestilent wasteland, and they themselves will be ravaged by every weapon in God’s arsenal, a reign of terror beginning with excruciatingly debilitating and disfiguring diseases, madness and blindness; fathers will cannibalize their children, Israel will be hewn to bits by pagan nations, and the wretched remnant will suffer beggarly exile. Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, is ferociously fervent in cataloging the punishment awaiting the stiff-necked Israelites who betray God. Nonetheless, there is still hope for redemption—as long as the chosen people eventually rededicate themselves to God.

Throughout the Torah, we witness the same motif of a prodigal Israel squandering its inheritance, then suffering multitudinous afflictions for such disobedience, then repenting, and then receiving once again God’s bounty. Sounds familiar, no? It is one of the most compelling themes emblazoned in the Hebrew Bible.

I believe it is significant that the consequences of Israel’s initial disaffection and ultimate reconciliation with God occur in this life, not the next one, whereas other religions so often focus on humanity’s fate in the afterlife—whether it be delighting in the crystalline palaces and translucent rivers of heaven as described in the Book of Revelation and so often elaborated upon and ornately embroidered by Billy Graham, or whether it be wallowing in the ghastliness of hell in which some of the damned (as in Dante’s medieval masterpiece The Inferno) are flogged, flayed, racked, dismembered, disemboweled, hacked, pierced, torn, impaled, blinded, throttled, suffocated, cramped, and crushed, while their bodies are penetrated by maggots, toads, and venomous snakes. In eighteenth century America, a notoriously frightening Puritan sermon (Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,) envisions the Almighty dangling reprobates over the jaws of hell as if they were nothing more than spiders.

Judaism is fundamentally different. Our ancient religious heritage rarely even mentions what will happen to us after death. In scripture and in rabbinic commentary, we are constantly reminded that we are not only responsible for what we do, but that we will live or our descendants will live to see the repercussions of our actions—be they pure or corrupt, self-enhancing or self-destructive.

Because so many of the Israelites who made the exodus from Egypt defied and defiled God, except for Caleb and Joshua, they are not allowed to enter the Promised Land. Note that this haven is not heaven or hell—it is not metaphorical or metaphysical—it is geographical.

But even if the Chosen People faithfully adhere to the covenant, there is another stipulation. They must do so joyfully. Painstakingly abiding by the letter of the law (with its attendant mitzvahs) is not enough. There must be passion; there must be spontaneous hallelujahs. This enthusiasm should be displayed not just at prayer, but in daily life. Otherwise, the Israelites will still be forced to endure the onslaught of the specified curses: “Because you would not serve the Eternal your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything….God will put an iron yoke upon your neck until you are wiped out.”(Verse 47).

I have chosen as the epitome of such unscripted joy and gladness an entertaining anecdote from Jewish folklore: Rabbi Levi Yitzhak who lived in northern Ukraine was a charismatic Chassidic leader of 18th century Europe. He recited and sang Shabbat prayers with dramatic gesticulations. According to his followers, in moments of ecstasy, he would fling his Kiddush cup up in the air and dance with uninhibited abandon on top of the table.

For years, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak longed to share a Shabbat meal with Rabbi Baruch, another Chassidic sage. There was, however, one difficulty: Rabbi Baruch was noted for his strict decorum; and any wildness on the part of Rabbi Yitzhak would not be welcome.

Then one day, Rabbi Yitzhak made a bargain with Rabbi Baruch. If invited to a Shabbat meal, he promised to restrain himself. In fact, he would remain absolutely silent throughout the meal except for the obligatory amens. Satisfied with these terms, Rabbi Baruch invited Rabbi Yitzhak and other noted guests to his house for the next Shabbat evening supper.

When the appointed time arrived, all was calm until Reb Baruch’s servant asked Reb Yitzhak whether he preferred his fish sweet or sour: “Fish?! Do I like fish?! I love God!!” he shouted and joyfully tossed the fish plate high into the air. To everyone’s horror, the plate landed on Reb Baruch’s tallit, completely staining it. What was Reb Baruch’s response? Was it dismay, disgust, fearful wrath? No.

Reb Baruch simply uttered the following words: “These stains are holy: they were caused by a Jew who really loves God.” Afterwards, Reb Baruch refused to have the stains removed because of the boisterous reverence that they signified. And that treasured, blemished tallit was passed down through the generations!

When my wife and I were in Jerusalem, we once saw an ultra-orthodox Jew at the edge of the Western Wall flailing his hands up and down and twisting his body as he passionately proclaimed his devotion to God. At the time, I was a little taken aback by what I thought was mere showiness, cheap histrionics. But later on, when I had seen so many of the congregants at the Great Jerusalem Synagogue almost robotically mutter from their siddurs—in between indiscriminate schmoozing—I began to better appreciate the overtly pious man at the outskirts of the Kotel.

Even under the accursed conditions in the Nazi death camps, according to Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, one can still lovingly praise God for the little blessings that Hashem so graciously provided: a crust of bread to be shared with fellow inmates, or a glimmer of light that seeps through the cell block.

And what about us? Will we be blessed or cursed? That depends on whether we betray our Judaic heritage or heartily embrace it. And the first step in the process of self-assessment and self-renewal is to see the glass, or should I say the Kiddish cup, not as half-empty (oy) but as half-full (joy). Amen.

 

Inside the Circle and Making Connections

October 2023

Shabbat Shuva Drash by Rabbi Daniel Lev

Today is Shabbos Shuva, the Shabbat of Returning, which falls on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur. As many of you know, teshuvah is the Jewish way of returning back to a path in life that leads us to become better versions of who we are. It also re-aligns us with our Creator and with a more meaningful and spiritual way of living in this world….at least while we’re here. Shabbos Shuva is named after the first lines in the Haftara today, Hoshea 14:2 that says:

 

שׁ֚וּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל עַ֖ד י-ה-ו-ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ׃ 

Return, O Israel, to HaShem your God,

By the way, for those of you who may not be familiar with the name “HaShem,” it is a name traditionally used for G-d – it means “The Name.” 

On Shabbos Shuva it is a traditional practice in many synagogues for the rabbi or a community member to give a lengthy and thoughtful drasha that resonates with the spirit of the High Holidays. I appreciate the privilege of sharing this Shabbos Shuva drasha with all of you today and, although, these talks usually run about 30-to-40 minutes I’ll make sure mine will be significantly shorter than that….

In a nutshell, we’ll look at two ways to understand how to relationship with G-d: One imagines HaShem above us and we exist separately below. The other allows us to have an intimate relationship with the Creator.

In honor of Moshe who sang his own drasha in Todays Torah portion Ha’zinu, I’ll start with this:

 

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת י-ה-ו-ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ 

You shall love HaShem your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

 

עִבְד֣וּ אֶת־י-ה-ו-ה בְּשִׂמְחָ֑ה׃ 

Serve HaShem with joy!

 

Here the Torah asks us to “love and serve” HaShem our G-d. But, what does the Torah mean here by “loving G-d?” What is she telling us about serving HaShem? And, what does loving and serving the Creator have to do with High Holidays?

Today I’m going to share with you several sources which address these questions – many of them derived from a mystical and psychological Shitah – “viewpoint.”

You could say that loving and serving G-d are connected, as we see here in  Deut 11:1 where it says: 

 

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת י-ה-ו-ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁמַרְתָּ֣ מִשְׁמַרְתּ֗וֹ וְחֻקֹּתָ֧יו וּמִשְׁפָּטָ֛יו וּמִצְוֺתָ֖יו כׇּל־הַיָּמִֽים׃ 

 

I’m going to translate this pasuk, this sentence, based on the understanding of the medieval commentator Ramban:

 

Love HaShem your G-d, and always protect those who G-d protects, and keep G-d’s laws, rules and commandments.

 

Here, Ramban, also called Nachmanides, says that the way to love G-d is to serve through caring for others and engaging in various forms of Torah practice. In other words: Loving G-d is the state of being we can reach when we serve G-d.

One way for us to love HaShem is through the genuine love and service we direct towards people, other living things and the planet. By dropping or limiting our egocentric attitudes in life we can bring ourselves into this love. One example comes from a nice Hin-Jew teacher named Richard Alpert who later took the name Ram Dass. Once, he was talking with his father about what he was going to charge for his eventual best-selling book: “Be Here, Now.” He wanted to set a fair price that would allow most people to buy to the book. His father, a very successful lawyer and corporate CEO, asked him, “What’s wrong Richard, don’t you want to make any money?” Now his father had recently worked very hard on a huge legal case for his brother-in-law, Henry, and they won a settlement. Ram Dass asked his father, “Wow, you worked a lot on that case, what did you charge Uncle Henry?” Father said, “What, are you crazy, I’m not going to charge Uncle Henry, he’s my brother-in-law.” Ram Dass said, “You see dad, that’s my predicament in setting a price for the book: Everyone is my Uncle Henry!” 

And so it is with Mitzvot that guide me to serve people and the planet from this place of love and care. As I engage in them, my separate self briefly disappears and I become connected on a soul level with the Great Soul of love…..and I’m not talking about James Brown!. 

The path of loving HaShem is also discussed by the great modern scholar of Judaism and Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Lewis Jacobs. He said that this love combines two perspectives. First, ideas on loving G-d are offered by the rabbis of the Talmud, who said it is “…less an attitude of mind or an emotional response than…a course of action.” Rabbi Jacobs said that the rabbis primarily understood this love to “…mean our engaging in of the precepts and the study of Torah.” So the rabbis reiterate the pasuk I shared earlier from Deuteronomy that tells us that we love HaShem by serving the Creator through Jewish practices.

Rabbi Jacobs said that the second perspective comes from some of Medieval commentators and especially from Jewish mystics who took literally the idea of “Loving HaShem.” This love occurs through D’veikut, through joining ourselves completely to the Holy One by means of our devotional yearning for connection through our practices. As Psalm 63:2 says:

אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֵלִ֥י אַתָּ֗ה אֲֽשַׁ֫חֲרֶ֥ךָּ צָמְאָ֬ה לְךָ֨ ׀ נַפְשִׁ֗י כָּמַ֣הּ לְךָ֣ בְשָׂרִ֑י ׃ 

God, You are my God; I search for You,

My soul thirsts for You, my body yearns for You

 

A useful insight, that parallels Rabbi Jacob’s two perspectives, is offered by the Reform rabbi and Kabbalah scholar, Lawrence Kushner. He offers two visual metaphors that can shed some light on what love and service of G-d might look like. Regarding the first metaphor Rabbi Kushner draws a big circle at the top of a blackboard and says “Imagine that this is HaShem, the Creator of the universe.” Then he draws a teeny tiny circle far below the big one, which represents us and the world we live in. 

This dualistic view is what characterizes much of Western Religion, including Islam, Christianity and much of mainstream Judaism. You can clearly see this in our liturgy, for the most part: G-d is up there and we are down here – and never the twain shall meet.

The second metaphor derives from the Jewish mystical tradition and again begins with the big G-d circle drawn on the blackboard. But this metaphor differs from the first in that our teeny circle is drawn inside of Hashem’s big circle. Rabbi Kushner observes that the idea that we can become one with HaShem may sound closer to Eastern religion. However, he said even the great Kabbalah scholar, Professor Gershon Scholem pointed out that you can find this perspective in Judaism and other Western faiths. 

To paraphrase rabbi Kushner, he says that “The goal in that metaphor is not only pray to God or have God tell you what to do…” but to realize that the whole time that you do engage in Jewish practice “…contrary to all of your illusions (of separation)….you are a dimension of the divine, and, in moments of heightened spiritual awareness, the boundary line of (your teeny circle) momentarily dissolves….and (in that moment) it’s no longer clear where you end and God begins.” 

It’s akin to the feeling that a parent and child have when the parent is comforting the little one. As things calm down, it is difficult on the part of each know where their skin ends and the other’s begins.  That is the intimacy of what it’s like to love the Source of All Being. We can experience this through Jewish practices that eventually wake us up to the spiritual fact that all of us, deep down….are souls, neshama’s. We are each like a soulful drop of water that that can intermittently and temporarily dissolve within the vast spiritual Ocean of G-d. 

During this holiday period, which is kind of like a long Jewish Life rehab seminar, our Tradition reminds us that we need to realign ourselves with our devotional, learning, ritual and ethical practices. Most important are Mitzvot and Halachot, commandments and Jewish Law. According to our Tradition, we are judged by ourselves and by the Creator on how well we’ve been running our Jewish lives. 

You could say that the Talmudic rabbis taught us that during Yamim Noraim, these Awesome Days, HaShem takes on the combined role of Santa Claus and the prophet Elijah – both on steroids. The Creator evaluates how good we’ve been….how well we have or have not engaged in Jewish practices, such keep kosher or Shabbat, connecting with the community, studying Torah or caring for our fellow human beings and the Earth. We are all hoping that our sins have not prevented us from doing the Mitzvot well enough, or we are all hoping that we can decisively turn our lives around in Teshuva in order to make it into the Book of Life for another year. Of course, this an example of the perspective that we are a separate, teeny circle looking up towards G-d’s Big Circle…. and hoping that Daddy won’t spank.

But if we see ourselves as inside the Circle of HaShem we can have a more loving relationship with the Holy One through the Mitzvot. We can ask ourselves “what is a Mitzvah that we should follow it?” – According to the Talmud as well as the mystic leader of the Hasidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov, the word Mitzvah is related to the Aramaic word “tzavta,” which means “connection.” 

So, for example, if we look at a Mitzvah-blessing like, “Blessed are you Hashem our G-d….who commanded us to light the Shabbat candles” – this can also be understood to say, “…Who connects us through lighting the Shabbat candles.” Connects us to what? Connects us to the Big Circle of HaShem. And through our practice of these commandment-connections we can also realize who we really are on a soul level.

A great illustration of this comes from a Hindu story where Ram, who is an incarnation of G-d, asks Hanuman, the Monkey king, “Who are you?” The Wise Ape tells Ram: “When I don’t who I am, I serve you; when I know who I am, I am you.” 

Some of our Jewish mystical masters hint at this. To paraphrase them: “When I don’t know that I am a soul who intimately resonates with HaShem, the Great Soul, then I can see myself as outside of HaShem and serve the Creator by engaging in devotional Mitzvot and caring for other beings. And as I use my kavvana, my deep intention, in this service, then my teeny circle can temporarily dissolve within the Great Love Circle of G-d

As we do the work of Yom Kippur from this “circle within the circle” perspective we can also become aware of what a CHEIT – a sin – truly is and how to TASHUV, how to return from it – in a way, to return home to who we are deep down.  As some of us know, the word “CHEIT” is related to the word for target. So, a sin can be understood as missing the mark. One kind of mark that we may miss is the opportunity to use our Jewish practices, like prayer, to go inside and immerse in our own soul place. That place is where we know who we are and what we are doing here. We miss that mark by making our goals to earn mitzvah points or pleasing a cranky Deity.  

So tomorrow night, on erev Yom Kippur, we can begin to take the time to examine our actions, to see how much we are missing this mark, to decide to enter the Great Circle through our service and love. As it says in Psalm 27: 4

אַחַ֤ת ׀ שָׁאַ֣לְתִּי מֵֽאֵת י-ה-ו-ה אוֹתָ֢הּ אֲבַ֫קֵּ֥שׁ שִׁבְתִּ֣י בְּבֵית י-ה-ו-ה כׇּל־יְמֵ֣י חַיַּ֑י לַחֲז֥וֹת בְּנֹעַם י-ה-ו-ה וּלְבַקֵּ֥ר בְּהֵֽיכָלֽוֹ׃ 

One thing I ask of HaShem, one thing I seek

To dwell in Your abode all the days of my life,

To gaze upon Your Beauty

And to meditate within Your Sanctuary.

In conclusion, I want to bless you and please bless me back that we all will love and serve in whatever ways we can with the intention of giving ourselves over to the experience of joyfully dissolving into the Holy One from time to time, and may we return from that knowing who we are in the deepest way. Finally, I bless you to be able to treat this planet and all who live here as your Uncle Henry.

 

Drash for Chayei Sarah

November 2023

by Sandra Z. Armstrong

In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, It is God’s faith in us that keeps us going. Abraham brought God’s words to earth. We as the people of Israel are to follow these words knowing that God really does have faith in us even when we are “down and out” and not sure which way to turn. Faith is not certainty but the courage to live with uncertainty. God teaches us, inspires us, forgives us when we fall, but we must make this world. It is not what God does for us that transforms us. It is what we do for God.

Upon reading the Torah we find underlying patterns of comfort and hope. Patterns in nature parallel our patterns in life as human beings. I experienced these two sets of patterns unexpectedly.

I was on an airplane coming back from Denver airport to Honolulu during the winter. I glanced down through the plane’s window and discovered absolutely stunning patterns of snow as it settled across the tops of the mountains. Mazes and slopes of identical drifted snow in a constant flow of peaks. It was mesmerizing.

In Hawaiʻi, walking along the water’s edge during low tide, I saw the ocean slowly moving back and forth along the sand while glistening in the sunshine. To my surprise, I noticed identical patterns of diamonds caressing the sand. Back and forth in sweeping gestures as the water curved into brilliant sloping shapes across the sand.

Natural patterns occur on earth, yet we experience patterns in our lifetimes as human beings in relation to God. The parsha Chayei Sarah is a prime example of human patterning. Follow this scenario of human ingenuity when it comes to looking for guidance from God. The patterns are apparent among the directions, actions and  answered prayers in this parsha:

It all begins with the mission to find a wife for Isaac.

Direction #1 into action along with prayer for success

(24:2) Abraham says to his servant: “Swear by the Lord the God of Heaven and the God of the earth that you will not take a wife from the daughter of the Canaanites” Furthermore Abraham answers when the servant inquires of how will I accomplish this task? And Abraham answers – 24:7 “God will send his angels before you”.

#2 (24:12)

Then prays the servant;  “O’ Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master”

#3 (24:13)

Again the servant prays to God, “Let the maiden to whom I say, please lower your jar that I may drink and replies “Drink and I will also water you camels. Please let her be the one decreed for your servant Isaac.

24:19 Rebekah is on the scene and uses exactly those words, “I will also draw for your camels”.

#4 (24:49) The servant recounts the whole pattern of prayer of God’s blessings before he sits down to eat with Laban & Bethuel. They state with specific input after the servant inquires …“Tell me also, that I may turn right or left.” They answer back: the matter was decreed by the Lord; we cannot speak to you bad or good.

#5 (24:67) Isaac is walking in the field which has been interpreted as praying and instituting the mincha service before evening when Rebekah and he make eye contact. They both know that they have met their intended. The pattern of praying and recognizing is almost complete until….

#6 (24:67) A final prayer completes the designed prayer with action when Isaac takes Rebecca into his mother’s tent. “Isaac loved her and thus found comfort after his mother’s death”.

I never quite understood until I studied this why the parsha was called The life of Sarah when it begins when she died.The very last line completes the pattern of prayers to God, action required and the positive result. Sarah lives on through the match of Isaac and Rebecca. Designated to be together through God’s protection, care and prayers.

The pattern continues when Sarah’s grandchild, Jacob, is eventually sent back to Laban with the promise from God in parsha Vayetzei. Jacob is assured by God that his descendants will be as the dust of the earth spread to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south. This is the same assurance from God given to his Grandfather Abraham who prayed in his lifetime whenever he needed help at pivotal points in his human mission. Abraham’s whole life paralleled patterns of praying and talking to God.

This six point pattern that appears in the story above reflects the six point pattern in the movement of our mitzvot during Sukkot to shake the lulav & etrog. This pattern equates directly to Chayei Sarah as God continues in all directions of our lives. What we pray for and what takes place between Heaven and Earth is evident in the Torah. Looking at the sheet that I handed out, I will show you what this mitzvah looks like of the six points of shaking the Lulav & Etrog into all directions of our lives, west, east, north and south (as paraphrased above and stated in the Torah). The six actions marked in the above prayer sequence add up when front up and then down are added for the mitzvah. You can see the pattern on the sheet that is diagrammed (and was passed around during the presentation). God is all around us in all that we do. As displayed in the action of shaking the Lulav & Etrog that represents the people of Israel as a whole, so too do we pattern our lives according to the reading of the Torah weekly.

 

(Picture of shaking the Lulav and Etrog attached below)

 

The Character of Abraham (Lech-Lecha: Gen. 12:1-17:27)

November 2023

Drash by Stan Satz

Three of the most popular and almost identical apocryphal (that is, non-Biblical) stories about Abraham are found in pre-Talmudic lore, as in the The Book of Jubilees Chapter 12, second century BCE; in the Talmudic midrash Genesis Rabbah, Chapter 38; and in the Koran Sura 21: Abraham, in a moment of righteous wrath, smashes his father’s idols and accordingly is flung into a raging cauldron from which he miraculously escapes unscathed. But in Genesis, Abraham is not a mythical superhero: he is at times all too human, as we witness in the first twenty verses of Lech Lecha, when we first meet Abraham.

Initially, Abraham selflessly and unequivocally obeys God’s directive to leave Haran (in Mesopotamia) to settle in Canaan, his new homeland to be:  “Go forth (lech lecha) from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.’’ What an honor, what a legacy! While exploring the boundaries of Canaan, Abraham builds altars to praise God.  At this point, Abraham demonstrates that he is an obedient servant following God’s will.

Soon, however, his trust in God falters. When a famine ravages Canaan, Abraham sojourns to Egypt with his alluring wife, Sarah: our first example of how God’s chosen one stumbles and falls. Abraham had other options: he could have tried to tough it out, having faith that God would ultimately provide for him and his household. Or he could have humbly called upon God, his benefactor, for some guidance. Or he could have questioned God’s plan. Or he even could have indignantly chastised God for making his reconstituted life so miserable so soon.  Instead, he abandons Canaan, the country that God had commanded him to dwell in, the country that Abraham had committed himself to. Unilaterally, he stumbles and falls.

Not only does Abraham jeopardize his God-given patrimony. He is cowardly and conniving. Assuming that Pharaoh will kill him to get his desirable wife, Abraham convinces Sarah to say that she is his sister. Accordingly, she becomes Pharaoh’s concubine, and Abraham is spared. But why is Abraham so afraid that he will be killed? He is childless, and didn’t God promise him that his offspring would inhabit Canaan? Evidently, he doesn’t believe (or perhaps he has forgotten) that God will keep him alive to fulfill that promise. At least until he has children, he should feel invincible—as long as he believes in God’s word.  Instead, he relies on Pharaoh for protection. If Abraham had more faith in God, he would not have sacrificed Sarah to ensure his well-being—and he would not have graciously accepted Pharaoh’s reward for pimping out his wife: he readily receives abundant livestock and slaves. Abraham, after blatantly succumbing to self-preservation and being tempted by earthly rewards, stumbles and falls.

We don’t know how long Abraham would have enjoyed his largesse in Egypt or how long Pharaoh would have enjoyed Sarah. After God afflicts Pharaoh with a barrage of plagues, Pharaoh realizes that he is being punished because of Abraham’s double dealing. Pharaoh accordingly banishes the couple, and they return to Canaan, which is now fertile again.

There is no indication in Lech-Lecha that Abraham regrets prostituting Sarah, a shameless ploy that the illustrious Jewish medieval scholar, Nachmanides, better known as Ramban, explicitly calls a sin in his commentary on Genesis Chapter 12, verses 10-20: “Know that Abraham our father… committed a great sin by bringing his righteous wife to a stumbling-block of sin on account of his fear for his life.  He should have trusted that G-d would save him and his wife and all his belongings, for G-d surely has the power to help and to save.”  Ramban then asserts that Abraham’s departure from Canaan to Egypt was also “a sin he committed, for in famine G-d would redeem him from death. It was because of this deed that the exile in the land of Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh was decreed for his children.”

When Abraham reaches the northern tip of Canaan, where he had first worshipped at the altar of God, he again invokes the name of Hashem. We don’t know Abraham’s motive. Is he just being dutiful or is he being devout? Is he contrite or is he proud that he outsourced Sarah and outwitted Pharaoh?

We can find fault with Abraham all we want, but God gives him a lot of latitude. Instead of condemning Abraham for deserting the Promised Land and degrading Sarah, God renews his pledge, his ongoing blessing: Abraham’s innumerable descendants will forever populate Canaan. Abraham, grateful for God’s abundant indulgence, a gift that he must know he hasn’t deserved, once more builds another altar to God, this time in Hebron.

All of these altars don’t alter the fact that Abraham’s righteousness is at best a work in progress. And that is what makes the Hebrew Bible so real, so relevant. Its Jewish heroes have magnificent attributes. But they aren’t perfect—they have moral failings:  Jacob, conspiring with his mother, Rachel, one of the four renowned Matriarchs, impersonates his older brother Esau to get a death-bed blessing from his blind father, Isaac; Aaron, the High Priest, sacrilegiously helps fashion the Golden Calf; God afflicts Miriam with leprosy because she gossiped and griped about Moses’ Cushite wife (a woman of color). Moses himself disobeys God by performing a miracle, creating life-giving water from a rock in order to placate the inveterately disgruntled Israelites; Samson, fondly overcome by Delilah’s  persistently enticing exhortations, reveals his secret strength that has until then protected his people from the Philistines; King David treacherously sends Uriah the Hittite to certain death in the front lines to satisfy his lust for Uriah’s wife Bathsheba; King Solomon at the end of his reign repeatedly desecrates the temple with idols worshipped by his heathen wives, most notoriously the Queen of Sheba.  Jonah, convinced that God will ultimately save the depraved pagans in Nineveh, tries to subvert God’s decision to have him first warn them of their impending demise.   Elijah, threatened by the idolatrous Queen Jezebel because of his unrelenting doomsday prophecies, flees to a cave in the desert to escape her wrath, thereby at least temporarily thwarting God’s woeful mission for him. King Hezekiah, who successfully weaned his subjects from worshiping pagan gods in Judah, later became obsessively enamored of his wealth. He even vaingloriously displayed the gems in his royal treasury to Babylonian envoys, prompting Isaiah to accuse Hezekiah of the sin of excessive pride, adding that all of these riches as well as his own children would ultimately be taken captive to Babylon.

I can’t think of any other saga in religious literature (pagan or post-pagan) that humanizes its protagonists as much as the Hebrew Bible does.  But despite their transgressions, God never deserts his Chosen People. God always leaves a little wiggle room for redemption.

And so this is my message for this Shabbat.  We are flawed children of a loving, patient, compassionate God who offers us abundant life, lifting us up when we stumble and fall. Amen.