Parashat Terumah / פרשת תרומה
Torah Portion: Exodus 25:1 – 27:19

Have you ever had the experience of giving a gift, sharing an idea, or making a joke only to find out that your well-intended “offering” is not welcome? If so, you wouldn’t be alone. Even though we are moved to contribute to others what we believe is of value, we often find that others don’t share our assessment of our contribution; for whatever reason, they don’t see in that gift, idea or quip the same worth or worthiness that we see. At these times, it’s not pleasant to feel rebuffed or rejected, but that’s life.

It is true that certain circumstances call for taking risks, saying what’s on our minds even though others may not agree with us or giving a precious gift even if we don’t know how it will be received. If we constantly shy away from offering our thoughts or going for broke, we may never progress. It’s not likely that any of us are wrong all the time, after all. Eventually, we’ll present something acceptable that may also turn out to be the critical missing peace of a complex puzzle.

That said, we are still wise to be thoughtful in our contributions. In making our free-will offerings we should consider how our offerings will be accepted and be aware of what offerings are actually needed. If, for example, someone is baring her soul to us about a very serious matter, we probably don’t want to be making silly puns. (I know from experience!) A thoughtful gesture of reassurance, however, would probably be appreciated.

This lesson applies to communal life as much as to our personal lives. Communities need their members to provide certain resources necessary for the well-being of the community: money, food, material goods, brain power, leg work, and the like. Without these things, bills would go unpaid, the lights would be shut off, people would go hungry, things wouldn’t get done. In short, it is important that we, as members of different communities, know what is needed and contribute as we are able.

While communities rely on philanthropy, we should also know that not all contributions are welcomed. Lots of people, for example, generously donate old books to their synagogue library. The problem is most synagogue libraries barely have room for their current collection. When they do have room, libraries usually give priority to new books or particularly important or, perhaps, rare books. Even then, if the books are covered with dust mites, any responsible librarian would reject the donation or toss the books immediately into the trash. The point being that even in the context of exercising our philanthropic impulses, we must be aware of what our communities really need and what they don’t need.

This is a lesson taught in this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Terumah, where we read (Exodus 25:1-9):

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him. And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense; lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.

And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. Exactly as I show you — the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings — so shall you make it.

For our biblical ancestors, there was no more sacred structure than the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary that would later become the model for the Temple in Jerusalem. In the biblical imagination, this was God’s home. This was where the priests could be closest to God at the holiest times of the year. Moreover, they imagined that God was the architect and designer of the sanctuary and that God knew exactly what was needed to build it.

The first requirement for God’s sanctuary, before all the “stuff,” was an open heart. Before the list of fabrics, skins, gems, and other materials that would be required for the sanctuary, there appears an injunction to take contributions only from those people whose hearts so moved them. Love of God and community, in effect, was the glue that bound all the other materials together. Indeed, as a nod to Valentine’s Day, I once referred to the Tabernacle as God’s and Israel’s “love shack,” a place where the Jewish people could demonstrate their devotion to God and God could be “emotionally accessible” to the people.

But what were the materials that God wanted for the Divine dwelling? God gave Israel a very specific shopping list. The medieval, Italian rabbi Obadiah Sforno, observes in his commentary to Exodus 25:3 that “no substitutes for the materials listed would be acceptable, such as perishables for instance.” He continues:

Even the kind of gemstones (pearls, for instance) not usable for Aaron’s breastplate, were not accepted. The only type of contributions that were accepted were those that in themselves would be usable in the construction of the Tabernacle and its paraphernalia.

Had we beem there when Moses spoke, we might have asked, “Why these materials and not others?” That’s an interesting question that might have given us solace when Moses then rejected the treasured possessions we had so lovingly brought to the building of God’s home. At the end of the day, however, the answer would have been, “God said so,” and that would have been enough. After all, we love God and want to make God happy.

This story should give us pause when we seek to build God’s dwellings in our own day. We may think everything we possess is worthy to go into the sanctuaries, literal or metaphorical, that we build. That thought is laudable in so far as it expresses our desire to give our “all” to God and community. Nonetheless, sometimes what God and community need is not our “all” but our “some,” some very specific things that will add sanctity to the dwelling. Anything else will be extraneous or, worse, distracting, for while God certainly has a good sense of humor, God can be temperamental, and sometimes even the best puns are best left for another time, if ever.

Parashat Mishpatim / פרשת משפטים
Torah Portion: Exodus 21:1 – 24:18

All my life I’ve heard it said of kind, generous people that they are “angels.” Children who are especially loving are “angels.” The man who gives selflessly of his time and energy to help others is “an angel.” The wealthy woman who donates millions of dollars to charity is “an angel.” If an angel is one who carries out God’s will to make the world a better place, then we truly have angels all around us. Given the brokenness of the world in which we live, we could certainly use many, many more.

By calling someone an “angel” we recognize the actions of extraordinary people, if not their very beings, as holy. That said, there is an aspect of the heavenly angels, to which we intend to compare these beloved individuals, that, to my mind, is actually unflattering and terribly problematic. According to the sages, each angel in our sacred literature is tasked with one function, and one function only. Angels in the Torah, whether heavenly or human, are inherently narrow-minded, inflexible and unfeeling. They are unable to do anything that God hasn’t specifically instructed them to do, and they are incapable of operating from a place of discernment or conscience.

Take, for example, the malach, the angel, in this week’s reading, Parashat Mishpatim. Once God has finished enumerating a host of commandments to Moses atop Mt. Sinai, God renews the promise to bring the Israelites into Canaan, appointing an angel to guard the Israelites on their way and upon entering the land:

I am sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have made ready. Pay heed to him and obey him. Do not defy him, for he will not pardon your offenses, since My Name is in him; but if you obey him and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. (Exodus 23:20-22)

Who is this angel and what is his purpose in “guarding” Israel? More importantly, if God’s name is “in him” and God is “el rachum ve’hanun,” a compassionate, merciful God (Exodus 34:6-7) who shows forgiveness, why isn’t this angel able to pardon Israel’s offenses? If Israel should defy the angel or, worse, God — as we know she does later through building a golden calf at the foot of the mountain while Moses remains encamped with God at the top of the mountain (Exodus 32) – are we to believe that this angel will essentially abandon Israel in battle?

To answer these questions, let us take a look at Genesis 18. There, three messengers come to Abraham and Sarah to inform Sarah that she will soon give birth; to heal Abraham after his circumcision; and to destroy the city of Sodom. According to rabbinic lore, the angels were Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, each of whom was assigned sole responsibility respectively for the aforementioned tasks (Talmud Bava Metzia 86b). In his commentary on Genesis 18:2, Rashi writes plainly, “One angel does not perform two errands.” Thus, like Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, the angel that will “guard” Israel on her journey has only this errand to perform: to guard Israel, nothing more.

Because the angel of Exodus 23 has only to guard Israel from harm, it cannot also judge Israel and pardon or, for that matter, condemn her for her offenses. Rashi comments on Exodus 23:21: “He has been sent on a specific mission and can only perform that duty.” The angel can either guard Israel in battle or not. If not, the angel would simple be recalled to the heavenly realm and Israel would be left to fend for itself with disastrous consequences. The one to judge and either pardon or condemn would be God, not the angel.

Another explanation given by Rashi for why the angel cannot pardon Israel is that angels have no conception of what it means to pardon. He comments on Exodus 23:21: “(The angel) has no experience in doing so, for he is a member of the class of beings that never sins.” Even if the angel could perform more than one task, he couldn’t possibly do something outside his realm of comprehension.

Who is the single-minded angel charged with guarding Israel? According to Nachmanides, another medieval commentator, “Our sages call him Metatron, the one who shows the way” (commentary to 23:20). Here Nachmanides ascribes to Metatron the task of guiding, not guarding, Israel through the wilderness, which, to be sure, is another plausible interpretation of the Hebrew for “to guard you” lishmorcha.” In any case, Metatron is never named in the Torah, but only in later literature. For example, in the pseudepigraphical work 3 Enoch, Metatron guides the author on a mystical tour of heaven. In the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, Metatron is depicted as the very guide for Israel in the wilderness that we read about in this week’s portion.

Given the unswerving, pre-programmed, other-worldly nature of Metatron and his fellow angels, we have to wonder if calling someone an angel is, indeed, a compliment. It is in the sense that people who add blessing to our lives appear to us as messengers from God. The compliment turns sour, though, when we consider that the angels of the Torah can only do one thing and that without a conscience. The Torah’s angels simply do what God tells them to do without having the capacity to discern between right and wrong. The human angels that we experience in our world, on the other hand, are often complex individuals motivated by compassion, justice, and other noble intentions, and to compare them with such limited beings at Metatron strikes me as insulting.

I am not suggesting eliminating the use of the term “angel” from our lexicon of accolades. Surely, to see any human being as an agent of the Divine is to bestow upon that person high praise. Rather, let’s just be sure to give credit where credit is due; the loving child, the generous man, and the altruistic woman deserve far more glory than even God’s heavenly agents.

Parashat Yitro / פרשת יתרו
Torah Portion: Exodus 18:1 – 20:23

If you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Exodus 19:5-6

Shortly before God delivers to Israel the Ten Commandments in this week’s reading, God instructs Moses to remind the People that observance of the forthcoming commandments constitutes Israel’s side of the covenant between God and Israel. As long as Israel is faithful to God as demonstrated by their adherence to the mitzvot, God will be faithful to Israel (Exodus 19:5), and God will choose Israel as God’s “treasured possession.” Such is the relationship between God and “his treasured people.”

As a Reconstructionist, I am inspired by the idea that observance of mitzvot brings us closer to God’s presence. At the same time, though, I struggle with the idea that such observance makes us God’s treasured or chosen people. Apart from the fact that too many Jews today don’t live their lives with any consciousness of the Covenant, I struggle because I don’t conceive of God as a supernatural being who either commands or chooses. Don’t get me wrong; I believe in God. I just don’t think of God in the highly anthropomorphic way that our biblical ancestors did or that many of my contemporaries still do.

For me, God is the power within the universe that makes for goodness, compassion, and beauty, all those things that speak to our better nature and evoke awe and wonderment. God is within nature, not outside and above it. When we pray “to God,” we seek to become aware of that aspect of reality that is God’s “presence.” Through prayer, study and performance of acts of loving kindness and other mitzvot, we align ourselves with that Presence.

So, then, what can it mean for me to say Israel is God’s “chosen people”? Believe it or not, this is not a new question. Our sages asked the same question nearly two thousand years ago and came up with a stunning midrash (Sifre to Deuteronomy 33:2):

Before God gave the Torah to Israel, God offered it to all the nations of the world. Each nation asked, “What’s written in it?” When God cited commandment after commandment, each nation in turn claimed that violation of this or that commandment was the very essence of its culture. Therefore, each and every nation declined God’s offer of Torah. When it came Israel’s turn, however, Israel asked no questions. “We will do and obey,” the people said. Thus did Israel receive the Torah.

What the rabbis teach us is that rather than God choosing Israel, Israel chose God! The Jewish people are “the choosing” people. What an insight! It means that we have accepted upon ourselves the mantel of being “a light unto the nations,” an exemplar of God’s faithful. Believing that they alone were doing God’s bidding, it’s no wonder our ancestors envisioned themselves as God’s treasured nation.

 

To say that Israel is the “choosing nation” is not to deny the Truth of Torah. It is, rather, to interpret our sacred texts in a way that empowers us to fulfill the mission we’ve chosen for ourselves to make God’s presence manifest in our world. Anyone can choose to join the Jewish people on our path of Torah, but they may also choose another path toward the same ends of increasing goodness, compassion and beauty.

Sadly, all around us we see people and nations whose path is directed not toward Godliness but toward a dark void. They may see the darkness they wrought as fulfilling God’s will, but they delude themselves. There is no goodness, compassion and beauty in terror and destruction, only misery, despair and suffering.

For the sake of all those innocents caught in a vortex of darkness, I pray their nations, soon find a path toward increasing — not diminishing — God’s presence in the world. May those nations one day come to be known as “choosing people,” too, and seek the Godly path toward goodness, compassion and beauty.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Beshalach / פרשת בשלח
Torah Portion: Exodus 13:17 – 17:16

This week in the Torah, we find a study in perspective. While the Israelites are fleeing Egypt, they feel tension in the present moment and comfort in the past, but they struggle to envision their future. We learn that a) we owe an allegiance to our past, but only to the extent that doing so doesn’t restrain us from becoming our best selves, b) we must live in the present and learn to cope with life’s exigencies, and c) despite today’s challenges, we must keep moving forward, for only by engaging with the unknown future do we grow as human beings. The message is that we must find a balance between looking backward, looking forward, and living in the here and now.

According to Exodus 12:40-41, the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years.  (Some scholars doubt the accuracy of this number. See http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2012/01/05/The-Duration-of-the-Israelite-Sojourn-In-Egypt.aspx#Article for a discussion on alternate views of the chronology and defense of the Torah’s position.) While the Israelites and the Egyptians fared well during the time of Joseph, eventually a “king arose who knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8) and he oppressed them. Thus, the Israelites became enslaved to that Pharaoh and remained enslaved for hundreds of years. Finally, though, God heard the cry of the Israelites and freed them from bondage.

So here are the Israelites, a free people departing Egypt, when we read “And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph” (13:19). How odd that as the people should have been running for their freedom, they went to the effort to exhume Joseph’s bones and bring them out of Egypt with them. This couldn’t have been such an easy task. Yet, on his death bed, Joseph had requested that when God would take the Israelites out of Egypt, the Israelites would take his remains with them and inter them in the Holy Land. Even in the midst of escaping Egypt, the Israelites — or Moses, at least — maintained faith with their past.

We have an obligation today not to forget the generations that came before us. They are the ones who put in the labor that has helped us get to today. Our ancestors may not have been perfect, yet they deserve to be honored for the contributions they made to the Jewish people. It is heartening to know that even Moses understood this and went through the trouble of honoring Joseph’s request.

Fast forward just a few verses to Chapter 14, and the Israelites discover that the “pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night” – God’s way of directing them on their voyage in the wilderness – had led them to a dead end. The Israelites now stand at the shore of the Red Sea. As they look behind them, the Israelites catch sight of Pharaoh’s army in pursuit of them, and the Israelites panic. “You should have left us to serve the Egyptians,” they protest to Moses. “You’ve surely brought us to our graves.” Already, and for good reason, the Israelites are wishing they were back in Egypt!

When Moses beseeches God for guidance, God’s advice is priceless:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. And you lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground.” (14:15-16)

In essence, God responds by saying, “Focus on the future. Stop looking back. Have faith that I’ll be with you as you move forward.” With Moses’ help, God causes the sea to split, and indeed, Israel rushes toward their freedom once and for all.

Were it not for God’s urging them forward, the Israelites would have lain down to meet their doom. If they couldn’t go back to Egypt, where they lived in misery but they lived, then they were prepared to not live at all. Can we blame them? There seemed to be no alternative.

The Israelites at the Sea of Reeds provides us with a powerful metaphor of how sometimes we are unable to see past the moment, and all we can think of is how miserable we are. At times like that, the past looks pretty good. This dynamic is illustrated even more clearly soon after the sea closes in on Pharaoh’s soldiers: Facing a shortage of water and food, the Israelites, lament: “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread!” (16:3). In times of desperation, we often look nostalgically on the past, but if that’s all we do, we’d never make any progress. Besides, we delude ourselves when we believe we were better off living in bondage.

There are times to honor the past, to live fully in the present, and to embrace the future. Apart from carrying Joseph’s bones out of Egypt, something the Torah actually attributes to Moses, the Israelites are totally incapable of holding on to this perspective. The past is glorified not for what it was but for how they perceive it in a time of desperation. The present time, full of challenges and uncertainty, is something to be avoided. “If only, we could go back in time,” the Israelites cry out. Stuck in the past, anxious in the present, the Israelites saw no future other than certain death. If Pharaoh’s men didn’t do them in, then the sea, dehydration or starvation would. What they needed was faith.

To be fair, the Israelites couldn’t reasonably have been expected to know that God would split the sea and then provide them with manna, quail and water. They had witnessed God’s “mighty hand” coming down on the Egyptians, but they hadn’t intuited that God’s “outstretched arm” also reached into Egypt and brought them out. They had no reason to believe they’d be saved. Of course, faith was in short supply. So, we should cut the Israelites a break.

Given their lack of faith, then, it’s a good thing the Israelites had Moses as their leader. Though he had his own uncertainties, he kept in touch with God. He allowed God to guide him and, thus, he became a model of faith for the rest of Israel. Unable to envision their future, the Israelites found a savior in Moses, who was able to respect an element of the past but not get stuck there, who, with God’s help, kept his cool in the moment, and who eventually looked forward, raised his staff, and opened before the Israelites a glorious future.

May we learn from Moses and put the past, the present, and the future in proper perspective.

 

How appropriate that on this weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. Day we read of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt! Dr. King, inspired by the Hebrew Bible, our Torah, sacrificed his life fighting for racial and economic justice, a theme that resounds throughout the Book of Exodus and comes to a climax with this week’s reading, Parashat Bo. Moreover, in memory of Dr. King, communities nationwide dedicate themselves to continuing his struggle to make sure all Americans, indeed all people everywhere, are accorded dignity and opportunity. With this week’s reading, Jewish communities have an opportunity to consider their own commitment to this struggle.

In the spirit of remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., this week’s “Taste of Torah” from Rabbi Matt Dreffin, associate director of the Institute for Southern Jewish Life’s education department, addresses one aspect of the original Passover meal that symbolizes much of what Dr. King stood for. The pascal lamb, represented today by a shank bone on the seder plate, calls us to reach out to those less fortunate in our communities who want for food. Caring for the needy is not something we think about only on Passover or act on one day a year on MLK Day or on any given “mitzvah day.” Caring for the needy is one of the great, eternal mitzvot of the Torah, a command that we must heed every day of our lives. I hope Rabbi Dreffin’s message resonates for you and that you will share his lesson in the spring as you and your friends and loved ones wonder what a shank bone is doing on the seder table.

Read “The Pascal Lamb’s Importance” by clicking HERE.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dan

Parashat Chayei Sara / פרשת חיי שרה
Torah Portion: Genesis 23:1 – 25:18

Seven years ago, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, one of the great Jewish thinkers of our day, wrote an article entitled “On Judaism and Islam” on this week’s Torah portion, Chaye Sarah. The article, which was later published in his book Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Covenant and Conversation) is as relevant today as ever.

One of the flashpoints for violence between religious Israelis and Palestinians is the city of Hebron. Hebron is holy to both Islam and Judaism because it there that our common ancestors are buried in the Cave of Machpelah. This week, in fact, we read about Abraham’s purchase of the cave in perpetuity so that he may give Sarah a proper burial upon her death. Eventually Abraham himself was buried there as were Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. (Rachel has her own burial-place, to which Jews make pilgrimage to this day.) Thus, the Cave of Machpelah and Hebrew are important, holy sites to all three Abrahamic faiths, but especially to Jews and Muslims. There is even a mosque at the site of the cave.

It saddens me greatly that a spot which should be a place of reconciliation is, instead, a place of ongoing conflict between the son of Sarah and the son of Hagar. It is as if Isaac and Ishmael never made peace with one another after their very rocky start as young boys. Recall, for example, that Abraham reluctantly did Sarah’s bidding and sent Hagar and Ishmael away because Sarah couldn’t bear the sight of Ishmael making sport with Isaac.

But Isaac and Ishmael did make peace. The Torah hints at this when it places both brothers at the side of Abraham’s grave (Gen. 25:9). The reconciliation of Isaac and Ishmael is painted even more vividly in two midrashim that Rabbi Sacks cites in his article. One midrash (Genesis Rabah 60:14) has Isaac fetching a wife for his father after Sarah died. The wife’s name in the Torah is Ketura, but the midrash says the wife’s original name was Hagar! Isaac longed for his father to be reunited with Ishmael’s mother, Sarah’s handmaiden whom she gave to Abraham when she believed it would only be through Hagar that Abraham could produce an heir.

The other midrash (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, 30) has Abraham visiting Ishmael twice. On the first visit, Ishmael’s wife sends Abraham away; she thought he was a beggar. After Ishmael divorces that wife, he marries a woman named Fatimah, which also happens to be the name of the prophet Mohammed’s daughter. Abraham returns to Ishmael’s house to be greeted by Fatimah, who offers him food and drink. Though Ishmael was not home at the time, Fatimah told him about the incident and Ishmael knew that Abraham still loved him.

Thus, writes Rabbi Sacks, “Yes, there was conflict and separation; but that was the beginning, not the end. Between Judaism and Islam there can be friendship and mutual respect. Abraham loved both his sons, and was laid to rest by both. There is hope for the future in this story of the past.”

Let us pray that the love restored between Isaac and Ishmael in Hebron be rekindled soon and in our day.