Category Archives: Leviticus/Vayikra

Bechukotai, Leviticus 26:3-27:34

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Link to parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/bechukotai

The Impossible World

By Cantor Sarah Sagor

There is something profoundly unsettling about B’hukotai. It seems to posit a world that we know, empirically, does not exist. It claims that there is a direct correlation between our actions and the natural order of the universe. Leviticus 26:3-5 promises unambiguously: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant you rains in their season … you shall eat your fill of bread….” Verses 14-16 warn just as clearly: “But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments … I will wreak misery upon you ….” The seeming system of reward and punishment that these biblical passages proclaim appears to contradict the troubling reality that we witness, in which good people suffer, and evil people often prosper.

Passages like these seem to provide justification for those who reject both faith and God. How often do we hear, in the face of personal trauma or tragedy, “I can no longer believe in God” or “I can’t believe in a God who would do this”? How are we to understand God’s threats and promises?

According to the biblical scholar Nehama Leibowitz, our ancestors regarded blessings and curses, such as those in B’hukotai, as forms of prayer: these are the things that people hoped for, even willed to happen, in their longing for a world in which justice would visibly prevail. Perhaps this parashah is telling us, in its own theological language, that there is a moral order to the universe that is intrinsically connected to the natural order of the universe–and that the two orders are mutually dependent. In these teachings, it is as if God gives humankind every opportunity to discern that human action is intrinsic, and essential, to the proper functioning of the cosmos.

Over and over again, the Torah enjoins us to act, to do, and to be because we “were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 6:21), because we “know the feelings of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9), and through these experiences have been given the opportunity to glimpse this truth. This is why we were chosen to bear witness to God’s revelation that “I, your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).

We are created in God’s image and we, as God’s partners, were chosen for a sacred task. This is our heritage and our responsibility; this is what it means to complete the work of Creation. But what if we forget, neglect, or ignore our sacred task of following the commandments?

The catalogue of threats and promises is a biblical way to explain how intimate the connection of the natural realm of the universe is to the moral realm. The two realms do not function independently of each other. There is a moral order to the universe as surely as there is a more easily observable natural order of “rains in their season.”

And it is in the moral realm where God cannot function alone. God never could–and so kept looking for partners. What did we expect of a God who created the natural universe? That the moral dimension was an afterthought? Our sages believed it pre-existed. God did not neglect the moral realm. On the contrary, humankind did. God kept expecting humankind to behave morally and was constantly disappointed with Adam, with Noah, with the generations after the Flood. Finally, God found Abraham, the person who engaged God as an equal on ethical ground: “Must not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Genesis 18:25), and the process of Revelation began.

The essential unity of all aspects of God’s Creation appears as well in Lurianic Kabbalah’s formulation of the universe. Isaac Luria’s theory of Sb’uirat Hakeilim (Shattering of the Vessels) seeks to explain the brokenness of our world, and to advance the means to restore it to its original unity. For Luria in the 16th century, it was the great cosmic shattering that had brought about our exile from God and from God’s Creation. Luria not only understood the primordial unity of God’s intention but also yearned for a return to it. In God’s promise of “rains in their season [and presence] in your midst,” Luria could see the opportunity for humankind to repair the world, to release the sparks, to play a role in the restoration of the universe through the performance of mitzvot.

In Judaism, the mystic does not seek to transcend or deny the material world. Rather, the mystic’s goal is the objective of this Torah portion: to restore the world, materially and spiritually, to a “single divine reality.” As Lawrence Fine describes that goal in his study of Luria, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos (2003), it is the “dream that collective human effort can mend a broken world.” This is the vision of B’chukotai.

In these final verses of the book of Leviticus, God describes-in the most tactile, physical, understandable terms possible-the relationship between God’s Creation and humankind’s responsibility. It is simultaneously bribe and promise, exhortation and encouragement. At the foundation of it all is the essential understanding of Torah: the physical and ethical dimensions of God’s Creation are wholly dependent upon each other, and we ignore that relationship at our peril. There is no quid pro quo for individuals in the world–God’s scheme is far grander and more subtle than that. The issue is not one of personal reward and punishment. It is the unity of God, the unity of the prophetic vision as rendered in the Reform liturgy: “On that day, all the world shall be One and God’s name shall be One” (Zechariah 14:9).

It is the ultimate fulfillment of Torah–as expressed in Leviticus 26:46: “These are the laws, rules, and torot that God established beino uvein b’nei Yisrael (in relationship with the Children of Israel).” This is the partnership that must one day bring about the fulfillment of our hopes, dreams, and strivings-the sparks released as heaven and earth, heart and mind and soul are united at last.

Sager, Sarah. "The Impossible World." MyJewishLearning.com. (Viewed on May 17, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/urj-bhukotai.shtml?p=0

The Walking Tour

By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

I am the type of person who has always believed that the only way to learn about something important is to buy a book about it. For example, it has been my good fortune to have traveled widely in my life and to have visited many interesting cities. Invariably, I bought guidebooks before each such visit, with detailed itineraries describing the “not to be missed” sites in those cities.

Eventually, I learned that there is a much better way to come to know a new city than to read a book about it. It is more interesting, more entertaining, and more inspiring to simply walk around the city aimlessly. I have even stopped buying those books which provide maps of walking tours around the city. Instead I just wander, and have never been disappointed in the process.

The list of cities which I have aimlessly explored has grown quite long over the years. It includes my own native New York, the holy city of Jerusalem, numerous cities in the United States, and several in Europe such as London, Rome and Prague.

Despite the diversity of these cities, I inevitably end up in one of two destinations: either a used bookstore, or a small park, usually one in which children are playing.

The last time I had this experience, I was quite taken aback and muttered to myself, “I guess my feet take me where my heart wants me to go.”

As soon as those words occurred to me, I realized that they were not my own words at all. Rather, I was preceded in that reaction by two very glorious figures in Jewish history: the great sage Hillel, and no one less than King David. That brings us to this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Bechukotai (Leviticus 26:3-27:34).

The parsha begins: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season…”

That is the standard translation of this opening verse. But a more literal translation would begin not, “If you follow My laws,” but rather, “If you walk in My laws.” Most translators understandably choose the word “follow” over the literal “walk” in this context.

But the Midrash takes a different approach. It retains the literal “walk,” and links it to the phrase in Psalms 119:59 which reads, “I have considered my ways, and have turned my steps to Your decrees”. After linking the verse in our Torah portion with this verse from Psalms, the Midrash continues, putting these words into the mouth of King David: “Master of the universe, each and every day I would decide to go to such and such a place, or to such and such a dwelling, but my feet would bring me to synagogues and study halls, as it is written: ‘I have turned my steps to Your decrees.’”

Long before this Midrash was composed, but long after the life of King David, the rabbinic sage Hillel is recorded by the Talmud to have said, “To the place which I love, that is where my feet guide me.” (Sukkah 53a)

The lesson is clear. Our unconscious knows our authentic inner preferences very well. So much so that no matter what our conscious plans are, our feet take us to where we really want to be. To take myself as an example, I may have told myself when I visited some new city that I wanted to see its ancient ruins, its museums, its palaces and Houses of Parliament. But my inner self knew better and instructed my feet to direct me to the musty old bookstores where I could browse to my heart’s content. Or to off-the-beaten-path, leafy parks where I could observe children at play.

This Midrash understands the opening phrase of our parsha, “If you walk in my laws,” as indicating the Torah’s desire that we internalize God’s laws thoroughly so that they become our major purpose in life. Even if we initially define our life’s journey in terms of very different goals, God’s laws will hopefully become our ultimate destination.

There are numerous other ways suggested by commentaries throughout the ages to understand the literal phrase, “If you walk in my ways.” Indeed, Rabbi Chaim ibn Atar, the great 18th century author of Ohr HaChaim, enumerates no less than 42 explanations of the phrase.

Several of his explanations, while not identical to that of our Midrash, are consistent with it and help us understand it more deeply.

For example, he suggests that by using the verb “walk,” the Torah is suggesting to us that it is sometimes important in religious life to leave one’s familiar environment. One must “walk,” embark on a journey to some distant place, in order to fully realize his or her religious mission. It is hard to be innovative, it is hard to change, in the presence of people who have known us all of our lives.

Ohr HaChaim also leaves us with the following profound insight, which the author bases upon a passage in the sourcebook of the Kabbalah, the Zohar:

“Animals do not change their nature. They are not ‘walkers.’ But humans are ‘walkers.’ We are always changing our habits, ‘walking away’ from base conduct to noble conduct, and from lower levels of behavior to higher ones. ‘Walking,’ progressing, is our very essence. ‘Walking’ distinguishes us from the rest of God’s creatures.”

The phrase “to walk” is thus a powerful metaphor for who we are. No wonder, then, that this final portion of the Book of Leviticus begins with such a choice of words. All of life is a journey, and despite our intentions, we somehow arrive at Bechukotai, “My laws,” so that we end our journey through this third book of the Bible with these words:

“These are the commandments that the Lord gave Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.”

Weinreb, Tzvi Hersh. "The Walking Tour." OU.org (Viewed on May 17, 2014). http://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-weinreb-on-parsha/rabbi-weinrebs-parsha-column-bechukotai-walking-tour/

Behar, Leviticus 25:1-26:2

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/behar

Who Does the Land Belong To?

By Lori H. Lefkovitz

In Parashat B’har, God declares to Moses that the land is a sacred trust and commands the people to observe periods of comprehensive release. This parashah invites us to consider how, in each generation, we can best serve as guarantors of this trust, respect the duty to rest ourselves and our natural resources, and experience “release.” The legislation in B’har presumes the value of balance and regulates a balance among productivity, rest, and relinquishment.  

Inasmuch as punctuating productivity with long pauses lends perspective to life and encourages us to express gratitude for the earth’s bounty, we may wonder what regulations we require today to help us nurture ourselves, one another, and the planet. As women join men in leadership positions and in the work force, it is becoming a Jewish communal priority to effect social and institutional adjustments that allow for a healthy balance between people’s needs and obligations. 

B’har affirms that the land belongs to God, and it must be permitted to observe its Sabbaths. The sensibility that the Land of Israel has a responsibility all its own to the Creator recognizes nature’s independence from humanity. The land must be permitted, just like human servants, to praise creation through Shabbat. In the psalmist’s words: kol han’shamah t’halel Yah, “All that breathes praises God” (Psalm 150). The earth must speak its own gratitude. 

In the Torah, the earth is an expressive organism. We read that when Miriam died, “the community was without water” (Numbers 20:2). Observing, as it were, its mourning for a heroine whose miracles were all associated with water, the earth dries up. To hear the speech of the earth is a blessing; but if we do not listen, the consequences of our deafness to the planet are traumatic. The ecology movement reminds us of what our biblical forebears understood: the independent consciousness of nature. 

Nature’s independence is trumpeted on Yom Kippur after a 50-year countdown. This is when we must (as the Liberty Bell translates the verse) “proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). We more closely translate dror (“Liberty”) as a proclamation of “release,” a letting go. Counting toward release, we can celebrate release-or we can live in fear of it. And so the liturgy tells us limnotyameinu, to count our days (Psalm 90:12), by which we are meant to understand that since our days are numbered, the trick is to make them count.  

Our duty is not to scramble tirelessly, but to be grateful and generous, to assume our small place in creation, and to join the trees in praise. Underlying the laws of B’har is an obligation to take care of each other, to leave no one homeless: “Do not wrong one another, but fear your God” (Leviticus 25:17).

The laws of the sabbatical year echo biblical Creation. The rhythm of the work week undergoes a cosmic magnification: People, imitating the Creator, are productive for six days and then rest. Nature is productive for six years and rests; and then geometrically, after the land has maintained this rhythm for seven cycles of seven: jubilee. The yovel, the jubilee, is a call to restore primal order: Indentured servants are freed, debts are forgiven, and property is restored to its original owners.  

Here is a caution against struggling to amass more, and against warring over real estate reminding us that all things are, eventually, released (one way or another) from our possession and control. After the divine promise to Noah that humanity would never again be destroyed by a flood, God devises the jubilee as a peaceful strategy for restoring the world to its original state. 
 
Appreciating that freedom must be learned, a midrash teaches that the Israelites wandered in desert circles for 40 years to make the short trip from Egypt to Canaan because it took that long for the slave population to learn how to manage its freedom. Today, it behooves us to reflect on the substantial gains of the women’s movement and admit that, as B’har teaches, we suffer the consequences of depletion if we do not adequately regulate our hard-won freedoms. Not only do many of us live unbalanced lives, but schools and charities have not corrected for the absence of an earlier generation of volunteer women, to the detriment of children and the poor.  

Society needs to effect adjustments so as to make two-career families more viable; and we risk perpetuating conditions of stress at work and home if we do not emphasize to rising generations the need to change existing institutional structures and correct continued gender inequities. 

One wonders whether, in the years since the onset of the contemporary women’s movement, we have been panting from exertion without having paused often enough to ask about the meaning of life. High- achieving adolescents too often suffer from depression, and teenage girls suffer from diminished self-worth. Perhaps we have been communicating an unbalanced definition of adulthood-adulthood without sabbatical and jubilation. 

The land, our possessions, our bodies, our children, and we ourselves are a sacred trust, and it is not our right to be infinitely demanding on them. We are commanded to rest, not when we are exhausted or having a breakdown, but regularly, as we count the days to Shabbat, to the seven years to the land’s sabbatical, and to the forty-nine years to the releases of jubilee.

Lefkovitz, Lori H. "Who Does the Land Belong To?" MyJewishLearning.com. (Viewed on May 10, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/urj-bhar.shtml

Putting Shmita Back On The Jewish Map

By Nigel Savage

Cycles of time are central to Jewish life, and they are amongst the most significant of our contributions to the world around us. The modern weekend of western tradition is simply the extension of the Sabbath from one day to two; without the Sabbath there would be no weekend. And without the Torah, and the Shabbat of Jewish tradition, there would be no Sabbath. In practice, today, Shabbat remains central to Jewish life, though Jewish people observe Shabbat differently from each other. But it’s literally impossible to imagine Jewish life without Shabbat.

And just as Shabbat punctuates the week, so too the chaggim – the holidays – punctuate the year. Tu b’Shvat and Purim and Pesach herald the spring. Shavuot marks early summer. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur provoke self-reflection as a new Jewish year begins. Succot celebrates the harvest and the end of summer. Chanukah offers light in the darkness and the knowledge that a new natural cycle will shortly begin.

In recent years there’s been a flowering of interest and awareness in the rhythms of the calendar. The every-28-years blessing of the sun was a big deal when it happened in 2009; I hope I’ll be around to celebrate the next one in 2037. More people probably count the omer, today, than did so a dozen years ago. New books have come out looking at the entire period from Rosh Chodesh Elul, through to Simchat Torah, as a single period of time, focused on teshuvah. More people each cycle seem to be learning daf yomi – a seven-and-a-half cycle of Jewish life that is an early twentieth-century innovation, but one which shows signs of lasting for a long time to come.

The one long cycle of Jewish life that remains relatively unexplored is the cycle of Shmita. The sabbatical year is no less central in the Torah than is Shabbat itself. Six days you should work, and on the seventh you should rest; six years you should work the land, and engage in commerce; in the sixth year (somehow) the land should rest, you should rest, and debts should be annulled. After 49 days, seven cycles of seven, the 50th day is Shavuot. And after 49 years, seven cycles of seven, the 50th is Yovel – the Jubilee year.

In a formal halachic sense – in terms of Jewish law – Shmita only applies in Israel. In practical terms, therefore, Shmita becomes headline news once every seven years when, invariably, there are arguments about how it should be observed in practice in the modern land and state of Israel. There is a good deal of work in Hebrew about Shmita, what it means, how it can and should be observed, and so on.

Even so, inside Israel Shmita is mostly the intellectual property of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox. Until perhaps very recently, few non-orthodox Israeli Jews have much engaged with Shmita, either as an idea or as a potential range of practices. Outside Israel, Shmita remains obscure. In the last two Shmita cycles – in 2000-2001, and in 2007-2008 – I’m aware of a number of synagogues, mostly orthodox, which held study sessions on Shmita. Beyond a few one-off learning sessions: not much.

It was in response to this, in December 2007, following a keynote given by Nati Passow of Jewish Farm School at Hazon’s second Food Conference at Isabella Freedman, that I said that Hazon would launch a Shmita Project. Its goal would be – and remains – simply to put Shmita back on the agenda of the Jewish people; and in due course, through us, to start to seed it as an idea in wider public awareness, beyond the bounds of Jewish life.

There are, I think, two broad – and somewhat distinct, albeit overlapping – ways for us to engage with Shmita. One is, in a sense, instrumental; the second has a deeper kind of intellectual integrity, but may also be vaguer.

The instrumental use is simply about putting Shmita literally back on the calendar. Non-orthodox synagogues may well not observe Shabbat in a halachic way; yet Shabbat is nevertheless different from other days of the week. Jews go to a Seder, or eat matzah on Pesach, even if they don’t keep all of the halachot of Pesach. So Shmita ought, in the first instance, to come back into active Jewish life as a distinct time-frame – regardless of the content with which we actually mark it. I mean by this, things like:

  • Using the time from now until the next Shmita year (which starts at Rosh Hashanah 5775, i.e. on September 24th 2014) as a distinct time-period in relation to Shmita: learning about it, getting people excited about, thinking about how the Shmita year could be different; and doing this in advance of the year itself. This involves publicly framing the Shmita year as a year distinct in the life of a particular Jewish institution. How could or should we be different, during this year, than during the other six years of the cycle?
  • Then using the Shmita year itself not merely to be different, in some way, than in the previous years; but also – for the first time in modern Jewish history; perhaps for the first time since Second Temple times – using the Shmita year itself partly to start a public conversation about the entire next seven-year Shmita cycle;
  • and then entering into a full seven-year cycle, from 13th September 2015 to 25th September 2022, with Shmita firmly on the calendar of Jewish life – with a sense of seven-year goals for institutions, being worked on through the full seven-year period, and with the seventh year itself being both a celebration, a culmination, and a period of rest and reflection, following the preceding six years.

The second way for us to engage Shmita is indeed to engage intellectually (and indeed emotionally, creatively and spiritually) with the texts themselves: the primary, secondary and tertiary texts that introduce, explicate, and commentate on the various ideas encompassed by the idea of “Shmita.”

I have been learning Shmita texts steadily for the last five and a half years. The longer I have learned them the more fascinated I have become by Shmita. The primary texts are models not only of brevity but also of unclarity and contradiction. What exactly were you meant to eat in the Shmita year? How do the different aspects of Shmita stand in relation to each other? If the Jewish people bequeathed to human history only these primary texts, what theory of Jewish tradition – of our values and aspirations – might we derive from them? The prozbul and the heter mechira: are these in some sense regretful compromises, which dilute the pureness of the original biblical texts? Or are they vital innovations in Jewish life which should be celebrated because they are grounded in the reality of human behavior and the necessity to place central human needs (in the economies both of land and of money) above abstract aspiration?

These questions are open questions. Shmita is the public property of the Jewish people – and a gift from us to the whole world. So please read about Shmita – learn its various texts – and share them. I, and everyone at Hazon, hope that this exploration and internalization of Shmita will enrich your life; and in due course play some role in creating a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

Visit Hazon online to learn more about the Shmita Project and to find-out more about the background, practices, and spiritual significance of the Shmita tradition, as well as its rich potential to transform our lives.
Savage, Nigel. "Putting Shmita Back on the Jewish Map." Hazon. (Viewed on May 10, 2013). http://hazon.org/shmita-project/overview/about/putting-shmita-back-on-the-jewish-map/

Emor, Leviticus 21:1-24:23

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/emor

Why Do We Count?

By Rabbi Shmuel Goldin

In the midst of the Torah’s discussion concerning the festival cycle, immediately after the commandment concerning the Omer offering (a barley offering in the Temple which marks the beginning of the harvest and allows the use of that season’s grain), the following mandate is found:

“And you shall count for yourselves – from the day after the Sabbath, from the day you bring the waved offering of the Omer – seven weeks; complete shall they be. Until the day after the seventh Sabbath, shall you count fifty days; and you will offer a new meal offering to the Lord.”

As codified by the rabbis, this mitzva, known as the mitzva of Sfirat Ha’omer, the Counting of the Omer, obligates each Jew to verbally count the days and weeks from the second day of the holiday of Pesach until the first day of the holiday of Shavuot. What possible purpose can there be in verbally counting the days and weeks between Pesach and Shavuot? The Torah offers no explanation for this mitzva.

Most obviously, the Counting of the Omer is perceived by many scholars as an act of linkage between the two holidays that border the mitzva, Pesach and Shavuot. Through the act of counting we testify that the Revelation at Sinai (commemorated on Shavuot) was the goal and purpose of the Exodus from Egypt (commemorated on Pesach). This relationship is established at the outset when God informs Moshe at the burning bush: “And this is your sign that I have sent you: when you take the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

On a deeper level, our counting consequently affirms that the physical freedom of the Exodus is incomplete without the spiritual freedom granted by God’s law; a truth mirrored in the famous rabbinic dictum: “No one is truly free other than he who is involved in the study of Torah.”

By counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot, many scholars continue, we also are meant to re-experience the sense of excitement and anticipation that marked this period for the Israelites, newly redeemed from Egypt. Just as we would “count the remaining days” towards an extraordinary event in our personal lives, so too we should feel a real sense of anticipation each year as we again approach the holiday that marks the Revelation at Sinai.

Other authorities choose to view these days primarily as a period of “purification from” rather than “anticipation towards.”

By the time of the Exodus, the Israelites have been defiled from centuries of immersion in Egyptian society and culture. Numerous sources, in fact, maintain that they have descended to the forty-ninth of fifty possible stages of defilement and are on the verge of becoming irredeemable. With haste, at the last moment, God pulls the nation back from the brink. The newly freed slaves, however, must now undergo a process of purification before they can encounter God and receive the Torah at Sinai. Forty-nine days – to counter each level of defilement experienced – must elapse before Revelation can take place.

By counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot each year, we remember and mark this refining journey. Just as a married woman monthly counts the days leading to her immersion in a mikva we must count and spiritually prepare ourselves for our reunion with God at Sinai.

Based on this approach, the Ohr Hachaim explains why Sfirat Ha’omer begins each year on the second day of Pesach, rather than on the first. The Exodus, he observes, occurs on the first day of the festival. For a portion of that day, therefore, the Israelites yet remain in Egypt and the journey of purification cannot yet begin.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik perceives yet another lesson embedded in the act of Sfirat Ha’omer. The Rav suggests that, in Jewish experience, an individual can perform the act of counting within two realms: the realm of Sfira and the realm of minyan (the root of each of these terms means “to count”).

When you count in the realm of minyan, the Rav explains, all that matters is the attainment of the ultimate goal, the endpoint of your counting. Nine upstanding, righteous Jews can assemble for a prayer service but, without a tenth, there is no minyan.

When you count in the realm of Sfira, however, things are different. Although you still count towards a goal, each individual unit in the calculation becomes a goal, as well. While someone counting precious diamonds, for example, is certainly interested in the total number of diamonds he has, he also pauses and holds each gem up to the rays of the sun, admiring its unique facets, color and shape.

The act of Sfirat Ha’omer teaches us to “count our days in the realm of Sfira” – to see each day as a goal unto itself.

Too often, we live exclusively goal-oriented lives; moving from accomplishment to accomplishment, from milestone to milestone, rarely stopping to appreciate the significance of each passing day. And yet, when all is said and done, the quality of the journey, in large measure, defines our lives – and the ordinary moments spent with family and friends are as significant, if not more significant, than the milestones themselves.

The Rav’s observation may also be mirrored in two versions of the verbal formula for Sfirat Ha’omer which have developed over the years. Some communities recite, “Today is the —-day la’Omer (literally “to the Omer”)” while others count “ba’Omer (literally “in the midst of the Omer”).” Taken together, these two versions form the balance that should mark our approach to life. On the one hand, without goals our lives are aimless. We therefore count la’Omer, towards the endpoint of the Omer count. On the other hand, never losing sight of the journey’s value, we also count ba’Omer, in the midst of the Omer.

Goldin, Shmuel. "Why Do We Count?" YUTorah Online. (Viewed May 2, 2014). http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/760527#

Perfection

By Rabbi Steven Greenberg

For Jews, the body is no mere container of the soul. We are, as is the Creator, invested in the creation. We have drunk in the words of Genesis, “and God saw all that God had made and behold it was very good” and remain intoxicated by the manifold power of the material world. According to the sages, man and woman provide the blood, bones and tissues and God contributes the spirit, the seeing of the eye, the hearing of the ear, consciousness and understanding. The whole of the body/soul is what we call, human.

Creation is the ground of Jewish ethics and theology. From this creation-centered beginning, we have become not only a people of the book but a “people of the body”. We are asked to love life as much as does God. For such a people, the state of the body carries meaning. It matters not only what comes out of one’s mouth, but what goes in. Our bodies are meeting places between earth and heaven, literal Temples. As such, the body is a text of sorts. Its form, and consequently, its deformity as well, have meaning.

This identification of body with meaning has a potentially threatening consequence. It shapes a particularly challenging picture of disability. This week’s Torah portion begins with list of the physical deformities and disabilities that would disqualify a priest from serving in the sanctuary. A priest with extra or broken limb, a blind or lame, blind or deaf could not serve. Contact with death would temporarily disqualify a priest, but the loss of a finger would do so permanently. Scholars explain that the special tasks of the priest required perfection. The Temple and its sacrificial service was the conduit of connection between the upper and lower worlds. The priestly officiant needed to mediate between the perfect and eternal upper world and the broken and temporal lower world. To stand at that nexus was dangerous and so required a wholeness of both body and spirit.

After the destruction, the laws of the priesthood largely collapsed into irrelevance. However, there is one halakhic detail in which the bodily wholeness of the priest survives. In synagogues in Israel commonly and in the diaspora on holidays, cohanim bless the congregation. A person with blemished hands, and even blemished feet or facial appearance is disqualified. A priest whose hands have blemishes may not raise his hands [in the priestly blessing]. Even if his hands were discolored, as those engaged in work of dying textiles would have been, he may not bless the congregation. The mishna in tractate Megillah 4:7 explains the reason. People would gaze at him and one may not look at the priest in the midst of the blessing. Whether it was feared that such a gazing was dangerous (holiness can be lethal) or that the appearance of blemish could undermine trust in the blessing, the preoccupation is not primarily with the priest, but with the people who see him. The Tosefta expands the limitation beyond hands to the face and feet of the priest, the exposed areas of the body, but it also permits a priest who is well known to his community, whose blemishes had become familiar to them, the participate in the blessing. Once a community has become attuned to the blemished or disabled person, once the they are no longer troubled or frightened by a person’s difference, even the rarified demand for priestly perfection disappears.

The movement of any disability away from the fear and revulsion, the sense of loss and vulnerability it may generate is about just this, familiarity. Once we know the person, the gazing and gawking diminish and relationship grows. It is the work of all communities to make the different familiar in the service of compassion. Grounding ethics in the realness of the body is a challenging affair, in part because the body is not fair. Its abilities are not evenly distributed and its graces are randomly given to kind and cruel. It is the distinction of Jewish ethics to remain with the body in its varied and socially complex meanings and to push both toward compassion and toward wholeness.

Greenberg, Steven. "Emor 5770." Limmud on One Leg. (Viewed on May 3, 2014). http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5770/emor/#another

Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:1-20:27

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/kedoshim

Being Holy

By Marion Lev Blumenthal

Parshat Kedoshim provides us with a code of rituals and of ethical acts to live by. The first two verses of Parshat Kedoshim read, “God spoke to Moses saying; Speak to the gathered Israelite community and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I, your God YHWH, am holy.'” These powerful words immediately raise several intertwining questions: Why be holy? What does holiness mean? And, perhaps most importantly, how are we to be holy?

Underlying the answer to all these questions is the key feature of holiness: Holiness is an attribute of God. We are commanded to act like God, (imitatio dei) for each of us has the capacity to be like God. Ramban states that to imitate God by being like Him, we must separate ourselves from the profane as He does by being holy.

Much of Leviticus gears its message to the priests. In contrast, the Holiness Code of Parshat Kedoshim in Leviticus 19 obligates each and every Israelite. Thus, the obligation to be holy devolved not only upon Moses, nor upon the priests alone, but upon all the People of Israel. This was a democratic and radical concept for its time.

But the command is also a message of difference. The Holiness Code that follows the opening verses in this Parasha encompasses laws governing man’s behavior to other humans (ben adam lahavero) and behavior of humans to God (ben adam lamakom). It details what God wants from us as covenantal partners. Its panoply of laws and commandments encompasses rites and ethics and includes sacrificial practices, family relations, obligations to the less fortunate, commerce, and more. Holiness is to touch every aspect of one’s daily life. God instructs Moses to relay the code to the “the gathered Israelite community.” The injunction to be holy therefore is directed not merely to each individual acting alone, nor to an aggregate of individuals. Rather, it is addressed to the Jewish People acting collectively, as a nation.

Being holy means being set apart, separate from the ordinary; it means being consecrated, sacred or, in short, divine. According to Sifra, the Israelites, by virtue of their ritual practices and way of life, are to be set apart as a holy nation. If we act differently (with holiness), we’ll be different from others; and if we are different from others (as a holy nation), we’ll act differently. Holy deeds and holy separation are inextricably intertwined. By acting holy we create a sacred space for God to dwell in our midst.

Today we live in unprecedented times. Never before have we been more accepted by the larger society and more integrated into the wider culture. But our personal freedom challenges our ability to live lives of holiness, of sacred difference, not only as individuals, but as a people as well. How do we maintain our distinctive religious tradition whilst living in a universalistic culture? Sifra teaches that it is not sufficient for us to maintain the commandments as individuals. We must seek to be a holy community.

By repeatedly coming together for sacred purposes – be it worship, learning, or tikkun olam – in communities of shared meaning, we reinforce our communal identity, enabling us to strive for holiness. Thus, when we come together as a community of learners at a conference on Jewish life, when we pray together as a congregation, when we attend to the needs of vulnerable populations, we fulfill our commandment to be a Holy people acting in the image of God. It is through our actions informed by the Holiness Code, as individuals and as a people that we honor the heritage of our ancestors who stood at Sinai.

Blumenthal, Marion Lev. "Kedoshim." Limmud on One Leg. (Viewed on April 19, 2014). http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5771/kedoshim/

Holy Nation

By Rabbi Label Lam

You shall not revenge nor bear a grudge against the children of your people and love your neighbor as your-self, I am HASHEM! (Vayikra 19:18)

Rabbi Akiva says, “Love your neighbor as your-self.” This is the great-general principle of the Torah!

How is “loving your neighbor” the big idea in the Torah? That may well be so for mitzvos between man and man but what of the many mitzvos between man and God? How is being a loving neighbor a holy matter? Why is it included in the litany of mitzvos following the mandate to “be holy?” It seems like a very pragmatic and common sense idea that anyone can easily figure out. Why is the verse punctuated with the statement “I am HASHEM?” What does that add to the mandate to love your neighbor?

 A senior colleague in Israel told us that that when he was yet a young man and pursuing his doctorate in philosophy his professor made the following bold declaration; “The Jewish Bible is the source of human rights in the world!” All of the students diligently wrote it down in their notebooks but this curious fellow who was the only Jew in the class, promptly approached the teacher and challenged him, “Where is it written so in the Jewish Bible? Where is that verse that promises human rights?” The professor was a little startled and he asked his student if he in fact agreed with his claim that the Jewish Bible is the source of human rights in the world. The student agreed wholeheartedly with the statement but he was merely curious as to what the source might be. This was a case of the student giving the teacher a homework assignment. And so it was the professor went to work scanning the Bible and looking for that verse that grants human rights, but his search proved fruitless. A week later he came back to class and admitted that he could not find a single verse that supported his statement.

 He also confessed how mystified he was because everybody in the history department, and the literature department, and the sociology department agreed with him. How could this be so? So he fed the question back to his student, “Maybe you have the answer!”

 This budding young Talmud scholar answered as follows: “Let’s take for example one verse that Rabbi Akiva refers to as the “great-general principle in the Torah” and that is “And you should love your neighbor as your-self!” The implication of that statement is that everyone has a right to be loved. When I walk into a room where you are obligated to love your neighbor, I have a right to be loved! The only difference is that the Torah never came as a “bill of rights” but rather as a “bill of responsibilities.” Now imagine how much more love exists in a relationship when both parties know what they owe in love as opposed when each demands that their rights be met. How much more love is in the room when every member of a family knows that they are duty bound to love and happily contribute? How much greater an entire community or a nation can be when it is composed of individuals who live up to this universal notion and categorical imperative to “love your neighbor as your-self!” Compare that to a world of persons seeking only their rights.

Rabbi S. R. Hirsch ztl writes, “…when one directs his love to the well-being of his neighbor, loves him as a being equally a creation of G-d…He proclaims his love of G-d, by his love to His creatures.”  Where people seek their “human rights” while blind to their obligation of love we can only hope for a barely civil society. However, looking to establish a new world order, HASHEM offered the Torah to the Jewish People on the condition that we would become an example of “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” obligated to give love and worthy of love in return.

Lam, Label. "Holy Nation." Torah.org. (Viewed on April 19, 2014). http://www.torah.org/learning/dvartorah/5771/kedoshim.html

Achrei Mot, Leviticus 16:1-18:30

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/achreimot

Making Sense of the Prohibitions of Leviticus

How do progressive, liberal Jews reconcile the apparent prohibition against homosexuality in Leviticus with the Jewish values of b’ tzelem elohim (respect for human beings as made in God’s image) and a commitment to inclusion and equality?  On this issue, the Reform position is clear, and succinctly stated by Rabbi Janet Marder, past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis:

In my view, the Jewish condemnation of homosexuality is the work of human beings – limited, imperfect, fearful of what is different, and, above all, concerned with ensuring tribal survival. In short, I think our ancestors were wrong about a number of things, and homosexuality is one of them…. In fact, the Jewish values and principles which I regard as eternal, transcendent and divinely ordained do not condemn homosexuality. The Judaism I cherish and affirm teaches love of humanity, respect for the spark of divinity in every person and the human right to live with dignity. The God I worship endorses loving, responsible and committed human relationships, regardless of the sex of the persons involved.

There are many ways to analyse this parsha within the context of LGBTQ rights.  SOJOURN, a network that provides resources, education, and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their families, has produced an amazing resource guide to explore the biblical text of Leviticus and deepen this understanding.  I would strongly recommend reading it: SOJOURN Resource Guide on Leviticus.  To support inclusion in your Jewish practice, look-out for welcoming Jewish communities that proudly display the following logo:

Keshet SafeZone

 

The Sanctity of Elemental Relationships

By Rabbi Shimon Felix

This week’s parashah, called Ahare Mot–“After the Death of”–begins by telling us that “God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they came near before God and died.” The parashah then goes on to describe the rather long and complicated ritual which is meant to take place in the Temple every Yom Kippur–the sacrifices, fasting, and prayers, the scapegoat, and, as a climax to the day, the offering, by the High Priest, of the incense in the Holy Of Holies, directly in front of the Holy Ark, in the intimate presence of God.

The reference to the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, which we discussed a couple of portions ago, in parashat Shmini, seems to be introduced here in order to give added weight and authority to the extreme sensitivity concerning the high priest entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. This, the Torah tells us, is an extremely dangerous interaction–“Speak to Aaron your brother that he should not come at any time to the Holy [of Holies]…so that he does not die. Only in this way [by carefully following the ritual of Yom Kippur] may Aaron come into the Holy [of Holies]…” Only once that ritual has been done according to all its details, on this one day of the year, may the High Priest enter the Holy of Holies, and experience the intimate, immediate presence of God.

After the Yom Kippur ritual is detailed, the parashah goes on to prohibit the offering of sacrifices anywhere but in the Temple; this act is seen as one of disloyalty, and is termed an act of “whoring,” terrible infidelity to God and His Temple. After this, the Torah moves along the following path:

– Do not offer sacrifices outside of the Temple.
– If you sacrifice or slaughter an animal, its blood must either be offered ritually on the altar, or, if it is not a sacrifice, the blood must be covered by dirt.
– In no circumstances is blood to be eaten.
– The parashah then concludes with a long list of prohibitions against certain sexual relations–incest, adultery, and others.

On Yom Kippur, in the morning, the custom is to read the first part of the parashah, that which describes the ritual of the day. Interestingly, the custom on Yom Kippur is to also read, at Mincha, the afternoon prayer, the end of the parashah, the part detailing forbidden sexual relations. Although the first custom makes obvious sense, what lies behind the practice of reading, on Yom Kippur, about the forbidden relationships? Moreover, how is the first part of the portion connected with the end of it?

I think it is important to note that the first and last sections are connected by more than the fact that we read them both on Yom Kippur: The opening section, detailing the Yom Kippur ritual, and, specifically the climactic moment of the high priest entering the Holy of Holies, uses words denoting coming near and entering.

First, we are reminded of how Nadav and Avihu died “b’korvatam lifnay hashem“–“when they came near before God.” We are then told how Aaron may enter the sanctuary–“Bezot yavo“–“with this he may enter.” The same word that was used regarding Nadav and Avihu’s coming near God is used over and over in regards to the sacrifices which must be brought on that day–“V’hikriv Aharon“–“and Aaron shall bring near” (i.e. offer, sacrifice).

So, too, in the section at the end of the parashah, detailing the forbidden relationships, we see the same key words. The section opens with the following words–“Every man should not come near (“lo tikrevu“) to their own flesh [close relatives] to reveal their nakedness.” The same root “karov,” to be near, is used to describe what happens on Yom Kippur in the Holy of Holies, and also to describe the relationships–the “coming near”–which the Torah forbids.

This connection between the ritual of Yom Kippur and the forbidden unions communicates to us a remarkable insight about the nature of intimate relationships. The Torah is clearly paralleling the intimacy one achieves with God in the Holy of Holies with intimate sexual relations. Just as the one must not be promiscuous, casual (“Speak to Aaron your brother that he should not come AT ANY TIME to the Holy [of Holies]…so that he doesn’t die.”), so too, our sexual relationships must not be that way.

The coming near to, the entering of, the Holy of Holies, God’s presence, described in the first section as an act which demands sanctification, ritual, and loyalty (remember the warning afterwards not to go “whoring” after other Gods by making offerings outside the Temple–outside the relationship) is paralleled by a similar view of sexuality. Our intimate relationships must also be sanctified, must be seen as something to be entered into with appropriate ritual, and to the exclusion of other unions.

It is, I think, startling to realize that the Torah, by equating these two things, is saying something radical about the ultimate importance of our intimate personal relationships. Just as our relationship with God is not to be taken lightly, and is of great, even cosmic importance–is, in fact, life-threatening in its significance–so, too, must we understand the nature of our intimate relationships.

The Torah sees human sexuality as something that closely parallels our relationship with God. Just as Eve, upon the birth of her first son, Cain, gave him his name because, as she said “Caniti ish et hashem“–“I have gotten a man, like (or with) God,” we, too, are meant to see the procreative act as somehow divine, as linking us with God. Hence the concern, on the part of the Torah, that we approach that act, and the relationship pertaining to that act, with the same care, commitment, seriousness and sense of sanctity with which we approach our intimate moments with God.

This is paralleled with the prohibitions against spilling animal blood without the attendant ritual of burying it, and against eating blood, which function as the bridge between the opening and closing sections of the parashah. Blood, the life force, the symbol of life itself, must be related to with dignity, respect, and care, just as our intimate relationship with God, and our intimate human relationships must be.

The Torah, in these three sections, is delineating for us an attitude, a world view, which relates to the most basic and powerful acts in our lives with sanctity, respect, attention, and spirituality. To relate to these elemental relationships and experiences in a casual, off-handed fashion would, in effect, define our lives themselves as casual, and of little significance.

Felix, Shimon. "The Sanctity of Elemental Relationships." MyJewishLearning.com. (Viewed on April 12, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/aharemot_bronfman.shtml?p=0

Metzora, Leviticus 14:1-15:33

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/metzora

Reappropriating the Taboo

By Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

Theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray notes: “Women’s bodies may be the hardest place for women to find sacredness” (Sacred Dimensions of Women’s Experience, 1988, p. 197). Our society sends negative messages to women from earliest childhood about the expected perfection of their physiques and the disappointments of any flaws in the female form. Parashat M’tzora, then, with its focus on menstrual impurity (15:19-24), seems to impart the same kind of unfavorable sense. Rejecting our own received biases and patriarchal assumptions about menstruation, however, can help us form a contemporary view of these so-called taboos.

What the Torah deems as tamei (“impure”) or tahor (“pure”) is not actually attached to cleanliness, even though they are often translated as “unclean” and “clean.” These Hebrew words are ritual terms, meant to designate those in a physical and spiritual state unable to enter the Mishkan (Tabernacle; and in later times, the Temple), or those able to do so. Those who are considered tamei are taboo (which is not what we think of as “bad”), meaning that they cannot enter the sacred space; and the thing that causes them to be ineligible to enter is also understood to be taboo.

Anthropologists note that taboos are the system by which a culture sets aside certain objects or persons as either sacred or accursed. Such objects or persons inspire both fear and respect. Penelope Washbourn writes: “Menstruation symbolizes the advent of a new power that is mana. . . ‘sacred.’ … A taboo expresses this feeling that something special, some holy power, is involved, and our response to it must be very careful” (in Woman Spirit Rising, 1989, p. 251). This mixed message of fear and power, contact and avoidance, actually dominates all the Torah’s passages around blood.

Blood, which is to be avoided in the realm of eating and sex, is the same substance that atones for the community in the sacrificial system, and it binds the individual male child to the Israelite covenant through circumcision. Blood both sustains and endangers; it is the medium of plague or deliverance. Thus blood–like every potent symbol–has the double quality and the twin potential of birth and decay, purity and impurity.

So too with menstrual blood. We who are often uninspired and unaffected by our bodies should reject the negative connotation of taboo–and explore, instead, the positive and sacred aspect. Surely a religion that has a blessing for an activity as mundane as going to the bathroom should have a blessing for the coming and going of menstruation. Since the male composers of the liturgy, living in a world where modesty was central and women’s bodies were a mystery at best, were not able–or more likely, not willing–to imagine such a blessing, we must be the first generation to do so.

More than thirty years ago, I did just this: I wrote a blessing for menstruation and have been writing about it and teaching it ever since. When I crafted my b’rachah, I reappropriated the difficult and offensive morning blessing in the traditional prayer book, which reads: “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.” (Traditionally, women say instead, “who has made me according to Your will.”) Each month, when I get my period, I say: “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, she’asani ishah: Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made me a woman.” Saying the blessing becomes a revolutionary moment, for this slight change in wording–changing the negative “who has not made me a woman” into the positive “who has made me a woman”–affirms my holiness and sanctity within the context of menstruation, not despite it.

I believe it is possible to rescue the aspects of mystery inherent in menstruation. While we reject menstrual huts, a separation from the sancta, and antiquated notions of cleanliness, we can still emerge with a sense of the overwhelming mystery of life and death that is embodied in our corporeal female selves. While many women associate menstruation with physical pain and discomfort, the experience nonetheless involves a degree of power. We should reject the notion that menstruation makes a woman “unclean” and instead think of this time as a period of intense electrical charges-the charge of life and death-pulsing through our bodies. Blu Greenberg urges us to focus more on the positive, “to restore that element of holiness to our bodies, our selves” (On Women and Judaism, 1981, pp. 118-120).

We can also consider a connection between menstruation and covenant. The prophet Zechariah speaks to “daughter Jerusalem” and “daughter Zion” about “your covenant of blood” as that which releases prisoners from the dry pit (9:9-11). It does not say “the covenant of blood,” as most translations render it, but rather emphasizes that blood is the focus of the covenant. The address to the feminine persona suggests that all “daughters of Zion” have that covenant of blood. It is through menstruation–from puberty when we accept our responsibilities as Jews, through the elder years when bleeding stops and deep wisdom starts–that the entire world is saved from the dry pit of death, in which there is no water, no womb, no regeneration, no rebirth.

See menstrual blood, then, as women’s covenantal blood–just as the blood of b’rit milah (ritual circumcision) is men’s. The possibilities for rituals around this abound. For women too have a b’rit (covenant) inscribed in our flesh as an “everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:19): not just once, at eight days old, but every single month. And M’tzora, in its ancient and perhaps awkward way, attempts to remind us.

Goldstein, Elyse. "Reappropriating the Taboo." MyJewishLearning.com. (Viewed on April 6, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/URJ--metzora.shtml?p=0

Dvar Tzedek

By Sigal Samuel

Parshat Metzora lays out the biblical prescriptions regarding menstruation, a topic more steeped in critique and apology than almost any other area in Jewish law. Contemporary readers seeking to reconcile the Torah’s approach to menstruation with their own sensibilities typically run up against a few uncomfortable facts. First, the text discusses this natural bodily process in the same breath as tzara’at, a skin disease traditionally viewed as punishment for sin, and seminal emissions, a phenomenon that rendered Israelite men ritually impure. Second, the text explains that a menstruating woman is impure for seven days, and that she communicates this impurity to anyone who touches her and anything she sits or lies on.

In addition, women in Israelite society were likely forced to withdraw from the public sphere during their periods, both because of their impure status—which prevented them from entering sacred spaces or eating sacred foods—and because they may have lacked the means to effectively contain menstrual blood.

For millions of girls and women in developing countries today, menstruation still stands as a barrier to women’s inclusion in society. Because feminine hygiene products are not always available or affordable, girls use rags, newspapers, leaves and mud instead. But these are relatively ineffective methods, forcing girls to withdraw while they are menstruating. Girls’ school attendance suffers as a result. According to an Oxford University study, in rural Ghana, many girls miss up to five school days each month because of their periods. Afraid to risk the humiliation of bloodstains on their clothes, they stay at home, often falling behind in class or dropping out entirely.

This reality is especially troubling when we realize that women are critical drivers of community development, which means that girls’ inability to complete their educations constitutes a great loss, not only for them as individuals, but also for their families, communities and countries.

While many organizations are starting to do the important work of providing poor women access to affordable sanitary pads, we must also look at the root of this problem, which is the fact that menstruation is taboo in many developing nations. It is rarely discussed openly, making its deleterious effects on girls’ school attendance difficult to see and address. Without a higher profile and increased visibility, the problem will continue to go largely unacknowledged.

In this regard, Parshat Metzora may provide a helpful model for the international development community. Despite some of the potentially negative aspects described above, there is one remarkably positive aspect to the biblical treatment of menstruation: as far as the Torah is concerned, this bodily process is neither private nor unmentionable. Instead, it is quite public: people often know when a woman has her period, and if she experiences any irregular bleeding, she must bring two birds to the tabernacle for the priest to sacrifice on her behalf. Far from being hidden or ignored, the rites of menstruation are dealt with by the priest: the person in the highest position of all. On an even more basic level, menstruation receives ample attention and acknowledgment in the text, and is treated with surprising frankness.

If families, schools, communities and governments in the Global South would begin acknowledging menstruation and discussing it candidly, we could remove the underlying stigma that prevents women from accessing the sanitary solutions they need to come out of hiding and achieve greater inclusion in society overall.

This destigmatization process needs to be undertaken, not only by people in developing countries, but by us as well. While we may have access to physical amenities like pads and tampons, many of us still view menstruation as private and unmentionable. We should, instead, address this bodily function with a sort of biblical openness, insisting not only that it be public but that the stigma associated with the normal functioning of women’s bodies be removed.

In discussing the priestly rites that accompany menstruation, ourparshah speaks of the sanctuary as the “tabernacle that is betocham.” While betocham is typically translated as “in their midst,” it can also be read quite literally as “in them”—in their bodies. I would like to propose that, this week, we choose to read the verse this way, and to recognize that the Divine sanctuary resides in us: physical, embodied beings. It is only by fully internalizing this notion that we will feel moved to ensure that girls’ and women’s bodies everywhere are freed from stigma and, by extension, that we will succeed in empowering girls and women as agents of change.

Samuel, Sigal. "Dvar Tzedek." American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on April 6, 2014). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5772/tazria-metzora-1.html

Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/tazria

Life, Death, and Impurity

By Rabbi Lauren Eichler Berkun

My spiritual and intellectual journey as a teacher of Torah began with the purity system in Leviticus.

Perhaps this was a strange place to begin my life’s passion — exploring genital discharges, corpse contamination and leprosy. However, the study of biblical purity laws yielded for me a profound appreciation for the beauty and wisdom of our tradition.

As a young feminist college student, I discovered that the ancient Jewish laws of menstrual impurity were not an example of gender discrimination or blood taboo. Rather, the Torah teaches that all genital discharges, female and male, are sources of tumah (ritual impurity).These laws are part of a broader symbolic system, which highlights the power of confronting mortality and the subsequent need to ritualize the reaffirmation of life.

Many scholars concur that life/death symbolism is the underlying principle behind the biblical purity system. According to this theory, one becomes impure upon contact with death or with the loss of potential life. Indeed, the greatest source of impurity is a human corpse (Numbers 19). Leprosy, a scaly white skin disease which made one look like a corpse (see Numbers 12:12), is another severe form of impurity. Genital fluids, which represent the loss of generative material from the font of life, also cause impurity (Leviticus 15).

According to biblical theology, God is the Source of Life. The God of Israel embodies life, and only the living can praise God (Psalms115). Therefore, our encounters with death or symbolic reminders of death momentarily remove us from the life-affirming rituals of God’s abode in the Temple. Only after a symbolic rebirth through immersion in the “living waters” of the mikveh (ritual bath) could one return to a state of purity.

For many years, I have relished any opportunity to teach about the biblical purity system and the powerful purification ritual of the mikveh. However, year after year, I am challenged by the most paradoxical case of impurity in Leviticus. Parashat Tazria declares that a mother becomes impure following childbirth:

“When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be impure seven days … she shall remain in a state of blood purification for thirty-three days … if she bears a female, she shall be impure two weeks …and she shall remain in a state of blood purification for sixty-six days” (Leviticus 12:2-5).

Why would a mother contract impurity upon bringing new life into the world if impurity is the result of the symbolic forces of death? Furthermore, why would a mother’s period of impurity double upon the birth of a female child?

Each time I read Leviticus Chapter 12, I consider the available responses to these persistent questions. There are several compelling suggestions. First, childbirth in the ancient Near East was fraught with danger to the mother and high infant morality rates. Thus, every childbirth was an encounter with potential death. Secondly, the pregnant woman is a vessel of abundant life. Following delivery, the mother experiences a loss of this powerful presence of life within. Her discharge of life leaves a void and creates the ritual necessity for purification. While neither of these answers perfectly reconciles the impurity of childbirth within the symbolic system, they both address the experience of childbirth as a nexus point between life and death.

In light of recent events, I have contemplated another possible explanation for the impurity of childbirth. In a haunting discussion about instability in the Middle East and the vulnerable state of world affairs, a colleague described the frightening experience of bringing a child into this world: “While I feel great joy in creating a new life,” he remarked,”I also know that I have created a new potential for death.” Every human being will die. Each birth brings another fragile, mortal being into the universe. In our precarious world, this reality quickly comes into sharp focus.

Herein lies one explanation for the double period of impurity following the birth of a female child. The baby girl embodies the potential to one day bear another new life. Each life that is brought into the world will also bring another death. Therefore, the Torah marks the birth of a girl, a future holy vessel for the creation of life, as fraught with twice the amount “death symbolism.”

Perhaps the laws of Leviticus Chapter 12 respond to the conflicting emotions of any new parent. A new birth brings joy and trepidation, awe and fear. A new parent has faith in the potential for life, yet dreads the possibility of death. The biblical purity system proclaims that our confrontations with the temporal nature of life leave a deep spiritual imprint–from conception to birth to illness to death. At every stage in life, we acknowledge and ritualize our encounters with death. Then we embrace and immerse in life anew.

Eichler Berkun, Lauren. "Life, Death, and Impurity." MyJewishLearning.org. (Viewed on March 29, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/tazria_jts.shtml?p=0

The Unbearable Lightness of Childbirth

By Rabbi Malka Drucker

What’s a feminist to do with the opening verses of this portion: “And Adonai spoke to Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman (conceives and) gives birth to a boy: then she shall be unclean seven days…and when the period of her purification is over, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtle dove, for a sin offering, to the opening of the meeting tent of the congregation to the priest.” (Italics mine.) Furthermore, the period of purification is twice as long for a girl baby.

According to the text, then, giving birth, no matter how one translates tamah, creates defilement or impurity, and furthermore it also requires a forgiveness of sin. Nehama Leibowitz calls the laws of purity concerning childbirth the “most perplexing phenomenon” of all such laws. If the first commandment is to procreate, why is the mother fulfilling the mitzvah made unclean? Abravanel flatly states that the mother certainly doesn’t need to bring a sin-offering, because she committed no iniquity.

So the meaning must lie deeper. Midrash Rabbah hints at it by its indirect response to the opening verses. R. Abba b. Kahana waxes lyric at the miracle of pregnancy and childbearing: “In the usual way, if a person holds a bag of money with the opening downwards, do not the coins scatter? Now the embryo has its abode in the mother’s womb, but the Holy One, blessed be God, guards it that it shall not fall out and die. Is this not a matter for praise?” He also goes on to remark that nature has placed udders where the womb is, but a woman “has her breasts in a beautiful part of her body, and her baby sucks at a dignified place.” Other rabbis remarked that the mother never expels the child after eating, and that menstrual blood is alchemically turned to milk for nursing. Furthermore, in utero the baby absorbs food through the navel, exactly what it needs, no matter what the mother eats, and it never needs to defecate. Finally, R. Aihu remarks on another aspect of God’s presence. When the baby is born and “full of ordure and all manner of nauseous substances,” everyone kisses and hugs the baby anyway, especially if it’s a male.

There is nothing ambivalent in our tradition about the birth of a child: It’s pure, cosmic joy that joins heaven and earth, because the Talmud tells us that every child has three parents. It is the most important event in Jewish life, so amazing that the one most intimately connected, the one giving birth, is transformed by it. The mother has come as close to the life/death nexus as anyone can, and both she and the newborn are in a temporarily separate place from the rest of the world. The reason the mother brings a dove for her sin-offering is because the dove is a symbol of homesickness. As the dove returns to the nest, so all who are kept from the sanctuary return to the “nest.” Leibowitz concludes that bearing new life makes the mother brilliantly aware of the greatness of God and at the same time, her own insignificance. She cites Isaiah’s amazement at witnessing the vision of God “sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and God’s train filled the Temple.” (6, 1) His reaction was one of inadequacy: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”(Ibid. 6, 5)

The creative process tests boundaries. The world begins with God giving birth to the world; When we give birth, we create a world, too. Women live the primal creation in childbirth, yet few have added their oral Torah to how they understand a text that suggests something negative and perhaps dangerous about their experience.

Like the rabbis, when I carried my first child I was filled with astonishment that within me, a being of heart, soul and might was growing, eating, and maybe dreaming. And then, with the help of months of prenatal training, I rode the birth contractions with my son, and hours later, we met face to face in wonder. The midrash says, “In this world a woman bears children with pain, but of the Time to Come [see] what is written! Before she will travail, she will have brought forth; before her pain will come, she will have been delivered of a man-child.”(Isaiah, 66,7)

Maybe the pain isn’t only physical, but emotional. I look at my child; I’m a writer with no words for the first look at him. I look at my husband and male doctor and cannot tell them what this is, who I am now. I can’t even make eye contact with them, because I feel so sorry that they cannot experience this. And I’m feeling inchoate sadness that seems to be connected to the separation caused by my baby’s birth. We are now in a less intimate relationship. I’m embarrassed by my negativity. I remember that the rabbis understood the sin-offering to be for screaming between labor pains that we will never submit to our husbands again. Maybe I should make a sin-offering for my strange regret. That I am feeling so much paradox cannot be talked about with anyone, because I, like Isaiah, feel powerless in the presence of God.

The baby comes home, we fall asleep together, and I imagine him and me as one, not quite separated yet. He and I know something together, we’re bonded. I imagine myself in ancient Israel, having given birth with the assistance of the women in my village. We are left alone much of the time. I know to stay away from the community and I’m grateful, because I cannot tell you where I’ve been, that my whole life is now different, I am no one now except mother. Wife, daughter, sister, friend, I’ll be those again, but not yet. This baby and I are in love, and we know no one else. Maybe we stay outside the community like lovers do, and maybe I have to sacrifice something, make an offering for the sin of my temporary obsession and abandonment of everyone else.

The community is always like a little city that keeps itself centered, to be inclusive of its members. When a woman gives birth, she is in an altered state. For seven days, she keeps herself separate with her son, fourteen days with her daughter. The rabbis understood seven days for the boy so that the circumcision can take place on the eighth day. Most commentaries understand the doubling of time for the girl to be acknowledgment that the baby herself is a potential giver of birth and therefore doubly powerful: more time is needed to absorb the meaning. Neither mourners nor birth givers enter the Temple because they will unbalance the community which practices business as usual. The community provides stability and familiarity. Its very nature threatens those who have been brought closest to God by giving birth or those who feel disconnected from life and its source through death. Our liturgy provides a way for us to journey together towards God, yet the service doesn’t include these two extremes.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, when asked what it meant to believe in God, answered, “To have radical amazement.” Prayer, ritual, study and reaching out to each other are the whetstone for awakening radical amazement. Rather than reading this text narrowly as primitive, maybe misogynistic, and irrelevant to our moment, I suggest that it may be the opposite. In a time when women give birth on Monday, go home Tuesday and have a dinner party Thursday, Tazria gives us permission to enter the fluid, deep transcendence that giving birth offers us. A child is born, a woman becomes a joyful mother, and God is never so near. We are invited to withdraw briefly from the chatter and flow of everyday life to shake our heads and exclaim, “God is in this place and I’m staying here for a while!”

Drucker, Malka. "Parshat Tazria: The Unbearable Lightness of Childbirth." (Viewed on March 28, 2014). http://www.malkadrucker.com/birth.html

Shmini, Leviticus 9:1-11:47

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/shmini

Reticence vs. Impetuosity

By Rabbi Jonathon Sacks

It should have been a day of joy. The Israelites had completed the mishkan, the sanctuary. For seven days Moses had made preparations for its consecration. Now on the eighth day – the first of Nisan, one year to the day since the Israelites had received their first command two weeks prior to the exodus – the service of the sanctuary was about to begin. The sages say that it was in heaven the most joyous day since creation.

But tragedy struck. The two elder sons of Aaton “offered a strange fire, that had not been commanded” (Lev. 10:1) and the fire from heaven that should have consumed the sacrifices consumed them as well. They died. Aaron’s joy turned to mourning. Vayidom Aharon, “And Aaron was silent (10:3). The man who had been Moses’ spokesman could no longer speak. Words turned to ash in his mouth.

There is much in this episode that is hard to understand, much that has to do with the concept of holiness and the powerful energies it released that, like nuclear power today, could be deadly dangerous if not properly used. But there is also a more human story about two approaches to leadership that still resonates with us today.

First there is the story about Aaron. We read about how Moses told him to begin his role as high priest. “Moses [then] said to Aaron, ‘Approach the altar, and prepare your sin offering and burnt offering, thus atoning for you and the people. Then prepare the people’s offering to atone for them, as God has commanded’” (Lev. 9: 7).

The sages sensed a nuance in the words, “Approach the altar,” as if Aaron was standing at a distance from it, reluctant to come near. They said: “Initially Aaron was ashamed to come close. Moses said to him, ‘Do not be ashamed. This is what you have been chosen to do.’”

Why was Aaron ashamed? Tradition gave two explanations, both brought by Nahmanides in his commentary to the Torah. The first is that Aaron was simply overwhelmed by trepidation at coming so close to the Divine presence. The rabbis likened it to the bride of a king, nervous at entering the bridal chamber for the first time.

The second is that Aaron, seeing the “horns” of the altar, was reminded of the Golden Calf, his great sin. How could he, who had played a key role in that terrible event, now take on the role of atoning for the people’s sins? That surely demanded an innocence he no longer had. Moses had to remind him that it was precisely to atone for sins that the altar had been made, and the fact that he had been chosen by God to be high priest was an unequivocal sign that he had been forgiven.

There is perhaps a third explanation, albeit less spiritual. Until now Aaron had been in all respects second to Moses. Yes, he had been at his side throughout, helping him speak and lead. But there is vast psychological difference between being second-in- command, and being a leader in your own right. We probably all know of examples of people who quite readily serve in an assisting capacity but who are terrified at the prospect of leading on their own.

Whichever explanation is true – and perhaps they all are – Aaron was reticent at taking on his new role, and Moses had to give him confidence. “This is what you have been chosen for.”

The other story is the tragic one, of Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu, who “offered a strange fire, that had not been commanded.” The sages offered several readings of this episode, all based on close reading of the several places in the Torah where their death is referred to. Some said they had been drinking alcohol. Others said that they were arrogant, holding themselves up above the community. This was the reason they had never married. 

Some say that they were guilty of giving a halakhic ruling about the use of man-made fire, instead of asking their teacher Moses whether it was permitted. Others say they were restless in the presence of Moses and Aaron. They said, when will these two old men die and we can lead the congregation.

However we read the episode, it seems clear that they were all too eager to exercise leadership. Carried away by their enthusiasm to play a part in the inauguration, they did something they had not been commanded to do. After all, had Moses not done something entirely on his own initiative, namely breaking the tablets when he came down the mountain and saw the golden calf? If he could act spontaneously, why not they?

They forgot the difference between a priest and a prophet. A prophet lives and acts in time – in this moment that is unlike any other. A priest acts and lives in eternity, by following a set of rules that never change. Everything about “the holy,” the realm of the priest, is precisely scripted in advance. The holy is the place where God, not man, decides.

Nadav and Avihu failed fully to understand that there are different kinds of leadership and they are not interchangeable. What is appropriate to one may be radically inappropriate to another. A judge is not a politician. A king is not a prime minister. A religious leader is not a celebrity seeking popularity. Confuse these roles and not only will you fail. You will also damage the very office you were chosen to hold.

The real contrast here, though, is the difference between Aaron and his two sons. They were, it seems, opposites. Aaron was over-cautious and had to be persuaded by Moses even to begin. Nadav and Avihu were not cautious enough. So keen were they to put their own stamp on the role of priesthood that their impetuosity was their downfall.

These are, perennially, the two challenges leaders must overcome. The first is the reluctance to lead. Why me? Why should I get involved? Why should I undertake the responsibility and all that comes with it – the stress, the hard work, and the criticisms leaders always have to face? Besides which, there are other people better qualified and more suited than I am.

Even the greatest were reluctant to lead. Moses at the burning bush found reason after reason to show that he was not the man for the job. Isaiah and Jeremiah both felt inadequate. Summoned to lead, Jonah ran away. The challenge really is daunting. But when you feel as if you are being called to a task, if you know that the mission is necessary and important, then there is nothing you can do but say, Hineni, “Here I am.” In the words of a famous book title, who have to “feel the fear and do it anyway.” 

The other challenge is the opposite. There are some people who simply see themselves as leaders. They are convinced that they can do it better. We recall the famous remark of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, that he was head of a nation of a million presidents.

From a distance it seems so easy. Isn’t it obvious that the leader should do X, not Y? Homo sapiens contains many back seat drivers who know better than those whose hands are on the steering wheel. Put them in a position of leadership and they can do great damage. Never having sat in the driver’s seat, they have no idea of how many considerations have to be taken into account, how many voices of opposition have to be overcome, how difficult it is at one and the same time to cope with the pressures of events while not losing sight of long term ideals and objectives. The late John F Kennedy said that the worst shock on being elected president was that “when we got to the White House we discovered that things were as bad as we said they were.” Nothing prepares you for the pressures of leadership when the stakes are high.

Overenthusiastic, overconfident leaders can do great harm. Before they became leaders they understood events through their own perspective. What they did not understand is that leadership involves relating to many perspectives, many interest groups and points of view. That does not mean that you try to satisfy everyone. Those who do so end up satisfying no one. But you have to consult and persuade. Sometimes you need to honour precedent and the traditions of a particular institution. You have to know exactly when to behave as your predecessors did, and when not to. These call for considered judgement, not wild enthusiasm in the heat of the moment.

Nadav and Avihu were surely great people. The trouble was that they believed they were great people. They were not like their father Aaron who had to be persuaded to come close to the altar because of his sense of inadequacy. The one thing Nadav and Avihu lacked was a sense of their own inadequacy.

To do anything great we have to be aware of these two temptations. One is the fear of greatness: who am I? The other is being convinced of your greatness: who are they? I can do it better. We can do great things if (a) the task matters more than the person, (b) we are willing to do our best without thinking ourselves superior to others, and (c) we are willing to take advice, the thing Nadav and Avihu failed to do.

People do not become leaders because they are great. They become great because they are willing to serve as leaders. It does not matter that we think ourselves inadequate. So did Moses. So did Aaron. What matters is the willingness, when challenge calls, to say, Hineni, “Here I am.”

Sacks, Jonathon. "Reticence vs. Impetuosity." OrthodoxUnion.org. (Viewed on March 22, 2014). http://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/reticence-vs-impetuosity/

Kashrut After Refrigerators

By Rabbi Bradley Artson

Without attempting to justify the elaborate Jewish dietary laws, the Torah provides a lengthy list of which foods are kosher and which are not.

Since the earliest stages of our history, Jews have understood the patterns of kashrut (the dietary laws) to be at the very center of our heritage. Jews have sacrificed their lives rather than desecrate themselves with ‘treif‘ (non-kosher) food. From the biblical and into the rabbinical period, new guidelines and restrictions developed as Jews encountered different cuisines and aesthetic standards, yet the core of kashrut has remained unchanged over the millennia. Some of our most stirring stories of Jewish martyrdom–of Jews who preferred to lay down their lives rather than abandon their Judaism–center around the laws of kashrut. Animals with cloven hooves and which chew their cuds are kosher. Fish with fins and scales are kosher. Birds which eat grain and vegetables, and which can fly, are kosher. Insects, shellfish and reptiles are not.

Thus, as early as the time of the Maccabees (167 B.C.E.), we have stories of Jews forced to eat pork by the Syrian oppressors. In those stirring tales, the Jews chose to die with their integrity intact, to expire still obedient to the dictates of God and Torah. They could not conceive of a Judaism without kashrut, so central were the dietary laws to the entire rhythm of Jewish living.

Yet, the Torah gives no justification for kashrut. Consequently, Jews throughout history have struggled to understand the reasons underlying kosher eating. One explanation, popularized by the Rambam (12th-century Spain and Egypt), is found in Sefer Ha-Hinnukh (The Book of Education). For this school of thought, God is a cosmic doctor, providing a prescription to ensure the health of the Jewish People. “God knows that in all foods prohibited to the chosen people, elements injurious to the body are found. For this reason, God removed us from them so that the souls can do their function.”

This view understands kashrut as a medical plan to ensure the health of individual Jews. God prohibited foods that were harmful, thus ensuring that Jews would be vigorous and fit. God, they tell us, was the first health-food freak, and kashrut was the macrobiotics of its time.

The problem with such a viewpoint (that pigs cause trichinosis and were prohibited for that reason, for example) is that it implies that God doesn’t care about the health of the rest of humanity. After all, kashrut applies only to the Jews. If God is the creator of all humankind, then isn’t it logical to expect God to care about everyone’s health?

Another understanding of kashrut, advanced by persons interested in abandoning the dietary laws, is that kashrut was an early compensation for unsanitary conditions. If the Jews of the Torah had invented refrigerators, they wouldn’t have required kashrut. Now, with modern technology, we don’t need these outmoded precautions.

My grandmother was one of the most devoted exponents of that opinion.  Now that we have homogenized milk and air-tight containers, we don’t need kashrut. Such a viewpoint has no basis in either science or religion. No sacred text links the practice of the dietary laws to a fear of epidemic, or to a need to avoid rotting meat. That viewpoint also ignores the fact that most of the world’s religions observe some form of dietary laws (Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, among them).

Why, then, is kashrut significant? If not health or physical well-being, what is the goal of the dietary laws? The answer is found in the Torah itself. “You shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I [the Lord] am holy.” 

Kashrut is a way of welcoming the holiness of Judaism into our daily lives. At each meal, we rededicate ourselves to the high standards of Jewish living and behavior. The network of Jewish values–loving our neighbor, caring for the widow and orphan, affirming a connection to the Jewish people, and establishing God’s rule on earth–gain strength and depth through the regular practice of kashrut.

Every form of effective pedagogy involves regular repetition and frequent exposure. Since we eat three times each day (at a minimum!), kashrut is the basic school to recall and reinforce a sense of living in brit (covenant) with God, to making the values of Judaism visible through our deeds and priorities. Affirming our Jewish commitments by adhering to kashrut cultivates a greater awareness and an unwavering commitment to the eternal values of Torah–justice and holiness.

Artson, Bradley. "Kashrut After Refrigerators." MyJewishLearning.org. (Viewed on March 22, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/shemini_artson5759.shtml?p=0

 

Tzav, Leviticus 6:1-8:36

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/tzav

Tzav 5774

By Ian Gamse

“So did Aaron and his sons, all the things which God had commanded by the hand of Moses.” (Vayikra, Leviticus 8:36)

The parasha ends with the account of the seven days during which the mishkan (the “tabernacle”) was dedicated – the culmination of six months of donations and crafstmanship. The eighth day will be the first day of Nisan, a new year and a new phase in the Israelites’ relationship with God. Rashi reads this final verse entirely positively: it comes to praise Aaron and his sons who have not deviated one iota from the instructions they were given.

Ramban, however, notices an oddity in the wording. The phrase that has been repeated many times in the account of the construction of the mishkan is “ka-asher tsivva”; here we have “asher tsivva”. The missing kaf makes a difference: whereas before everything had been done “just as God had commanded”, here it is merely “which God had commanded”. He accounts for the difference by reading forwards: on the next day, the eighth day, Aaron’s two elder sons will do something that they had not been commanded, bringing “strange fire” into the sanctuary and turning celebration into tragedy.

But what does he mean by making this comment at this stage? Presumably that the lapse was predictable and its cause already discernible – so we must ask what that cause was and why Aaron and his sons are appointed priests despite an apparent flaw.

I would like to suggest that what lies behind Ramban’s comment is an essential difference between Moses on the one hand and Aaron and his sons on the other. Moses – his head literally in the clouds – is able to exactly as God has commanded, with no interruption, no interference. The constant repetition of the phrase “just as God had commanded” is applied to things that Moses does himself and to the work done under his supervision. But the end of the seven days of dedicating the mishkan marks a transition: the mishkan moves from the world of Moses to the world of Aaron – a world that is fallible – a world in which the mishkan is not just an ever-present reminder of the immanence of God but an ever-present reminder of the golden calf, for which it atones.

Fallibility, however, may not be bad. The Kotsker rebbe cites Midrash Tanchuma: “Said the Holy One, blessed be He: if I wanted an offering, should I not instruct the angel Michael to offer Me an offering? But from whom do I ask? From Israel.” If what God wants is specific actions, says the Kotsker, He should ask the angels – beings without free choice who perform His will exactly. Instead, God instructs us, humans, who must put some effort into deciding to do what is required of us – and it’s that effort which is what God is looking for, even though it comes at the price of possible failure.

So perhaps we can read the Ramban’s words not as a critique of Aaron and his sons but as a celebration of the introduction of human fallibility, and thus human potential, into the pristine, sterile structure.

Gamse, Ian. "Tzav 5774." Limmud on One Leg. (Viewed on March 15, 2014). http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5774/tzav/

On Not Trying to Be What You Are Not

By Rabbi Jonathon Sacks

The great leaders know their own limits. They do not try to do it all themselves. They build teams. They create space for people who are strong where they are weak. They understand the importance of checks and balances and the separation of powers. They surround themselves with people who are different from them. They understand the danger of concentrating all power in a single individual. But learning your limits, knowing there are things you cannot do – even things you cannot be – can be a painful experience. Sometimes it involved an emotional crisis.

The Torah contains four fascinating accounts of such moments. What links them is not words but music. From quite early on in Jewish history, the Torah was sung, not just read. Moses at the end of his life calls the Torah a song. Different traditions grew up in Israel and Babylon, and from around the tenth century onward the chant began to be systematized in the form of the musical notations known as taamei ha-mikra, cantillation signs, devised by the Tiberian Masoretes (guardians of Judaism’s sacred texts). One very rare note, known as a shalshelet (“chain”), appears in the Torah four times only. Each time it is a sign of existential crisis. Three instances are in Bereishit. The fourth is in our parsha. As we will see, the fourth is about leadership. In a broad sense, the other three are as well.

The first instance occurs in the story of Lot. Lot had separated from his uncle Abraham and settled in Sodom. There he had assimilated into the local population. His daughters had married local men. He himself sat in the city gate, a sign that he had been made a judge. Then two visitors came to tell him to leave. God was about to destroy the city. Yet Lot hesitates, and above the word for “hesitates” –vayitmahmah – is a shalshelet. (Genesis 19: 16). He is torn, conflicted. He senses that the visitors are right. The city is indeed about to be destroyed. But he has invested his whole future in the new identity he has been carving out for himself and his daughters. Had the angels not seized him and taken him to safety he would have delayed until it was too late.

The second occurs when Abraham asks his servant – traditionally identified as Eliezer – to find a wife for Isaac his son. The commentators suggest that he felt a profound ambivalence about his mission. Were Isaac not to marry and have children, Abraham’s estate would eventually pass to Eliezer or his descendants. Abraham had already said so before Isaac was born: “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” (Genesis 15: 2). If Eliezer succeeded in his mission, bringing back a wife for Isaac, and if the couple had children, then his chances of one day acquiring Abraham’s wealth would disappear completely. Two instincts warred within him: loyalty to Abraham and personal ambition. Loyalty won, but not without a deep struggle. Hence the shalshelet (Genesis 24: 12).

The third brings us to Egypt and the life of Joseph. Sold by his brothers as a slave, he is now working in the house of an eminent Egyptian, Potiphar. Left alone in the house with his master’s wife, he finds himself the object of her desire. He is handsome. She wants him to sleep with her. He refuses. To do such a thing, he says, would be to betray his master, her husband. It would be a sin against God. Yet over “he refused” is a shalshelet, (Genesis 39: 8) indicating – as some rabbinic sources and mediaeval commentaries suggest – that he did so at the cost of considerable effort. He nearly succumbed. This was more than the usual conflict between sin and temptation. It was a conflict of identity. Recall that Joseph was now living in, for him, a new and strange land. His brothers had rejected him. They had made it clear that they did not want him as part of their family. Why then should he not, in Egypt, do as the Egyptians do? Why not yield to his master’s wife if that is what she wanted? The question for Joseph was not just, “Is this right?” but also, “Am I an Egyptian or a Jew?”

All three episodes are about inner conflict, and all three are about identity. There are times when each of us has to decide, not just “What shall I do?” but “What kind of person shall I be?” That is particularly fateful in the case of a leader, which brings us to episode four, this time about Moses.

After the sin of the golden calf Moses had at God’s command instructed the Israelites to build a sanctuary which would be, in effect, a permanent symbolic home of God in the midst of the people. By now the work is complete and all that remains is for Moses to induct his brother Aaron and his sons into office. He robes Aaron with the special garments of the high priest, anoints him with oil, and performs the various sacrifices appropriate to the occasion. Over the word vayishchat, “and he slaughtered [the sacrificial ram]” (Leviticus 8: 23) there is a shalshelet. By now we know that this means there was an internal struggle in Moses’ mind. But what was it? There is not the slightest sign in the text that suggests that he was undergoing a crisis.

Yet a moment’s thought makes it clear what Moses’ inner turmoil was about. Until now he had led the Jewish people. Aaron his older brother had assisted him, accompanying him on his missions to Pharaoh, acting as his spokesman, aide and second-in-command. Now, however, Aaron was about to undertake a new leadership role in his own right. No longer would he be a shadow of Moses. He would do what Moses himself could not. He would preside over the daily offerings in the tabernacle. He would mediate the avodah, the Israelites’ sacred service to God. Once a year on Yom Kippur he would perform the service that would secure atonement for the people from its sins. No longer in Moses’ shadow, Aaron was about to become the one kind of leader Moses was not destined to be: a High Priest.

The Talmud adds a further dimension to the poignancy of the moment. At the burning bush, Moses had repeatedly resisted God’s call to lead the people. Eventually God told him that Aaron would go with him, helping him speak (Ex. 4: 14-16). The Talmud says that at that moment Moses lost the chance to be a priest. “Originally [said God] I had intended that you would be the priest and Aaron your brother would be a Levite. Now he will be the priest and you will be a Levite.”

That is Moses’ inner struggle, conveyed by the shalshelet. He is about to induct his brother into an office he himself will never hold. Things might have been otherwise – but life is not lived in the world of “might have been.” He surely feels joy for his brother, but he cannot altogether avoid a sense of loss. Perhaps he already senses what he will later discover, that though he was the prophet and liberator, Aaron will have a privilege Moses will be denied, namely, seeing his children and their descendants inherit his role. The son of a priest is a priest. The son of a prophet is rarely a prophet.

What all four stories tell us is that there comes a time for each of us when we must make an ultimate decision as to who we are. It is a moment of existential truth. Lot is a Hebrew, not a citizen of Sodom. Eliezer is Abraham’s servant, not his heir. Joseph is Jacob’s son, not an Egyptian of easy-going morals. Moses is a prophet not a priest. To say Yes to who we are we have to have the courage to say No to who we are not. There is pain and conflict involved. That is the meaning of the shalshelet. But we emerge less conflicted than we were before.

This applies especially to leaders, which is why the case of Moses in our parsha is so important. There were things Moses was not destined to do. He would not become a priest. That task fell to Aaron. He would not lead the people across the Jordan. That was Joshua’s role. Moses had to accept both facts with good grace if he was to be honest with himself. And great leaders must be honest with themselves if they are to be honest with those they lead.

A leader should never try to be all things to all people. A leader should be content to be what he or she is. A leader must have the strength to know what he cannot be if he is to have the courage to be himself.

Sacks, Jonathon. "On Not Trying to Be What You Are Not." Rabbi Sacks on Parsha, Orthodox Union. (Viewed on March 14, 2014). http://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/trying/

Vayikra, Leviticus 1:1-5:26

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/vayikra

Bridging the Distance

By Rabbi Michael Pincus

How do we bring k’dushah, “holiness,” into our lives and into our world? The entire Book of Levitcus challenges us with this question, and it is through this lens we must view this portion. As we learned above, this question is not reserved for our leaders, but rather it is a challenge directed to each of us.

The sacrificial system of yesterday is not the only set of rituals that today have lost their sacred meanings. While we yearn for holiness in our lives many of us struggle to find it.

Maimonides suggests that perhaps these primitive rituals reflected the time in which they were given. In other words, the Torah offers these animal and meal offerings to humanity as an intermediary step between the physical world of idolatry that our ancestors came from and the world of ideas where our tradition sought to arrive.

We live in a world that is increasingly less physical and more virtual. (For example, our ideas, once written with paper and ink, are now read from dots that appear on a screen.) It is an era in which what is holy seems less and less real.

The korbanot, “sacrifices,” that make up the Torah’s sacrificial system perhaps gave our ancestors the opportunity to feel to close to the Divine. And for those who had committed a chet, a “sin,” the sacrifice may have offered a process to help them find their way back to feeling closer to God again. The root of the word korban means “to get close”; the word chet is related to a term that means “to miss the mark,” as an archer might miss a bull’s-eye. By extension, it can refer to anything that distances one from others, from God, and from one’s “true” self. Today, there are lots of distractions that can create distance, but do we have real ways that enable us to get closer?

This week’s Torah portion reflects the distance we have traveled from a physical way of dealing with our failings to a more abstract process. As we reread the text, may it guide us to find meaningful ways in our lives to express ourselves and draw closer to the holiness we seek in our lives.

Pincus, Michael. "Davar Acher: Bridging the Distance." Ten Minutes of Torah, ReformJudaism.org. (Viewed on March 8, 2014). http://www.reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/vayikra/looking-through-smoke-transparent-message

Dvar Tzedek

By Mollie Andron

She gently took my hand off of her back, looked me in the eye, and said: “Sarah, these laws are like sealed books to us: we comprehend neither their basic meaning nor the purport of their rules and regulations.” We must honor what is being asked of us. Today you must bring your offering of flour to the priest who will make expiation for you; even if your act was beshogeg (accidental).”

This was hardly the answer that I was seeking. While my mother was a person of complete faith who accepted the laws from Mt. Sinai without hesitations or questions, my sisters and I struggled. “Ema,” we would say, “we are from a different generation. We didn’t experience the miracles that happened when you left Egypt or the revelation at Sinai. We have only your words, but hearing about something is radically different than seeing it with your own eyes. You always taught us that it wasn’t until Moses saw the golden calf with his own eyes that he broke the tablets.”

She saw the truth in our argument, but she also fully believed in her relationship with the Divine. She trusted God even if God’s actions were beyond her human understanding. “Sacrifices,” she said, “are not only about atoning for a wrongful act; they are also a way to draw closer to God. “Remember,” she said, “even the word for sacrifice—korban—comes from the root karov—closeness. Sacrifices are a privilege, a way of communicating with God.”

“But I didn’t even do it on purpose,” I said. “It was beshogeg,” I muttered under my breath. I sat in the kitchen alone fixated on the laws of shogeg—accidental sins. “If a soul shall sin inadvertently against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things that ought not to be done, and shall do any of them…”

After repeating the words to myself again and again, I suddenly noticed something strange in the language of the commandment. Why does God use the language of “soul—nefesh”? Why not “person—adam”? My accidental sin was a physical action, committed by my body, not my soul. So why then is God talking about souls? I always thought of my body and soul as two separate and opposite entities, but God seems to be suggesting that my soul and my body are one, and that human actions, which come from thoughts, reside in the soul. According to that logic, even if I sinned accidentally with my body, it came from my thoughts. That idea made me quiver. How could I have thoughts that I didn’t even know about?

I grew more and more upset and confused by the sacrificial system. Even if I agreed that I was responsible for my subconscious thoughts, why did I need to perform a physical ritual to atone for them? And also, how could the system guarantee that a physical act will cause an internal change? What about people who sacrifice just because they are told to do so? Or those who simply offer their sacrifice without actually changing their behavior or attitude?

Without noticing what I was doing, I snatched a jar from the kitchen counter and flung it across the floor. The jar immediately shattered into several tiny pieces and flour scattered across the floor. In disbelief, I looked down at my hands. How had I once again managed to do something that I hadn’t intended?

On one of my fingers a cut from the broken glass began to gently bleed. A few droplets of blood dripped into the flour. Looking at it, I realized that this flour on the ground—roughly a tefach—was the flour that had been intended for my sacrifice. I started to cry. There was none left for my offering. I had missed my chance.

As my tears touched the flour, they slowly started turning it into dough. I sat there cupping the dough in my hands and began to knead it, pressing and sculpting it with all of my strength. In those brief meditative moments, gazing down at the fragmented jar, I recognized the power of a physical action accompanying a verbal intention. This flour scattered across the floor was my offering, I realized, although it didn’t occur in the place that it was supposed to, or with a witness nearby. But it had the same intended effect: I experienced the power of a physical action causing an emotional transformation.

***

Author’s note: As I grappled with the notion of a shogeg, described in Parashat Vayikra, I was struck by two elements: the relationship between our subconscious thoughts and our actions, and the value of a physical atonement ritual. I wrote this story in order to explore the relationship between these two ideas. Drawing from the ideas of several commentators, I came to appreciate the significance of a system that asserts that we must be held responsible for our actions, even those actions that are motivated by thoughts that are somewhat hidden.

The prescription to engage in the physical act of sacrifice was about helping people pay attention. It was a way of reminding people of the danger that can come from not being mindful of one’s behaviors. Today, we engage in many acts that can unintentionally result in negative impacts on people around the world. We may purchase clothes that were produced by workers whose rights are violated or consume food from other countries that struggle to feed their own populations. In the absence of a sacrificial system, Parashat Vayikra reminds us to consider what physical actions we can take to help us be mindful of our thoughts, actions and their impact. By paying closer attention, we can simultaneously be drawn closer to ourselves and to one another.

Andron, Mollie. "Dvar Tzedek 5774 Vayikra." American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on March 8, 2014). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/vayikra.html?autologin=true&utm_source=education&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20140303-E-DT