Tag Archives: Community

Israel: D-7

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A week before my first trip to Israel and I am nervous and excited. Excited to finally visit the place that is so central to my prayers and rituals. Nervous that my expectations will not be met and I will disappointed in a place that I want so badly to love and embrace. The trip feels like a pilgrimage of sorts, a coming home, a return to something my heart needs. At the same time, though, I want to be dispassionate and not demand too much: I don’t want to risk losing the Israel of my prayers.

I am incredibly lucky to be able to make this maiden visit with members of my synagogue. The itinerary is stimulating and challenging and exactly the way I wanted my first trip to be. The question framing our trip is: “How does a country dealing with the basic existential question of survival not only hold on to its basic declaration of intent – to be a state both Jewish and democratic – but also create, build, thrive and grow?” We will travel the length and breadth of Israel with this question in mind, not looking for faults, but trying to uncover complexities: seeking to understand how it is possible to be Jewish, progressive, and Zionist in this most complex of societies. Wrestling with this question will be a journey that I hope will increase my connection with the State of Israel and teach me more about myself and the place my heart calls home…I can’t wait to get there.

Nitzavim-Vayeilech, Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30

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

The I-Thou Encounter

By Robbie Duschinsky

‘For this commandment which I command you this day, it is not too hard for you, neither is it far off… But the word is very nigh unto you, in your mouth, and in you heart, that you may do it [la’asoto]’ (Deut 30: 11, 14). What does it mean for the commandments to already be ‘very near’ to us?

One person who considers this question is the early Christian thinker Saint Paul. Paul writes ‘For the word’ – ‘that is, the word of faith’ – ‘is very near to you, in your mouth and your heart’ (Romans, x: 8). For Paul, what is near us from the beginning is the possibility of faith in G-d. Considering differences between a Christian and a Jewish perspective, the modern Jewish philosopher Martin Buber observes wryly in his book Two Types of Faith (p.53) that Saint Paul misses out the last bit of the verse from Deuteronomy ‘that you may do it’ [la’asoto]. In Buber’s account, the commandments are not too hard for us or far off – because communication with G-d is an ongoing dimension of what we do. This communication, Buber argues, is present in each connection in which someone or something is treated as meaningful and extraordinary in their own right, an encounter Buber calls ‘I-Thou’. Such encounters, he insists, occur in all kinds of circumstances – relating to other people, learning new things, encountering nature – across in all the various doings that make up the concrete practices of our lives. Each one points beyond itself towards communication with and instruction from G-d.

A surprising figure comes to Saint Paul’s defence. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan veers off during a discussion of psychosis to argue against Buber. Lacan argues that ‘the I is essentially fleeting in nature and never entirely sustains the Thou’ (Lacan, Seminar 3, p.286). Lacan’s point is that we are all so fractured, so dependent on other people for our self-definition: how can we sustain any relationship with the Thou? If Lacan is right, the possibility of relationship with G-d is thrown back onto the question of whether a person has faith – rather than any prior intimacy between G-d and our fragmentary, everyday human actions. But Lacan has not got Buber right at all; in fact, the opposite. For Buber, it is precisely because each of us is always fractured, never whole, and always in some way dependent upon other people, that I-Thou encounters occur in our lives. That is why G-d’s word is so near to us, always and necessarily. We can’t ever fully avoid a sense of our experiences as meaningful and extraordinary… there is so much we don’t know, we are surprised even by ourselves, and we need one another so badly.

Duschinsky, Robbie. "Another Voice 5773." Limmud On One Leg. (Viewed on September 19, 2014). http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5773/nitzavim-vayelech/

You Are Stationed

By Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

What are we doing when we read the Torah? Do we regard it as a resource for our own lives today, and engage with the texts as part of our own personal search for meaning and purpose? Or: Are we, like the generations who went before us, rehearsing an ancient rite as we read and reread the ‘Five Books of Moses’ each year in the context of the weekly rhythms of congregational life? Perhaps, taking a more objective approach, we read to gather fragments of evidence about the past; or, to explore the stories and mores of an ancient people; or, to discover clues to the civilisations of the ancient Near East. Perhaps we read the Torah as a work of literature; or, adopt a critical approach to its textual sources and their redaction.

Some of us will be reading the Torah for many different reasons and from many different perspectives – and, as with all the portions of the Torah, Parashat Nitzavim – Va-yeilech may be read on all these levels. Nevertheless, as soon as we identify this double portion, which runs from Deuteronomy chapter 29 (:9) through Deuteronomy chapter 31, we are situating our reading in the context of the annual Torah reading cycle, which dictates, depending on the particular year, that Nitzavim and Va-yeilech, will either be read together during the same week, or on succeeding weeks, one after the other. What is more, because within the annual Torah reading cycle Nitzavim or Nitzavim – Va-yeilech is usually read, either immediately before Rosh Ha-Shanah, or on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, these texts take on an additional resonance as conveyors of messages about personal responsibility, commitment and the need for repentance. Indeed, within the progressive Jewish world, passages from Nitzavim are also read on Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. So, the congregations of the Movement for Reform Judaism read Deuteronomy 29:9-14 as the second portion on Rosh Ha-Shanah and read Deuteronomy 30: 8-20 on Yom Kippur afternoon, while the congregations of Liberal Judaism read Deuteronomy 29:9-14 and 30:11-20 on Yom Kippur morning.

These plural frames of reference generate frameworks of interpretation, even before we examine the texts. They certainly contribute to the way I read them. And so, when I read the opening words of Nitzavim: Atem nitzavim ha-yom kul’chem lifney Adonai Eloheychem – ‘You are stationed here today, all of you, before the Eternal One your God’ (Deut. 29:9a), I am not only encountering a narrative about the Israelites ‘stationed’ – nitzavim – in the wilderness, at the end of their forty year journey c. 1250 BCE, I am also imagining the Jewish people, here and now, gathering together during the most sacred season of the Jewish year. Significantly, the text itself insists on this identification. It is clear that ha-yom, ‘today’ is not just a transient moment in time, long since passed, it is every today. As we read at Deuteronomy 29 (:13-14):

Not only with you do I make this covenant, with its sanctions, with those who are with us today, standing before the Eternal One our God, but also with those, were not here today.

Rather than analyse every word and phrase of Nitzavim- Va-yeilech, I want to stay with the thread of connection created in the text by the word ha-yom, ‘today’, and take my lead from the opening statement: Atem nitzavim ha-yom kul’chem lifneyAdonai Eloheychem – ‘You are stationed here today, all of you, before the Eternal One your God’.  In the second half of the verse, the message, kul’chem, ‘all of you’, is underlined by setting out a list: ‘your heads, your tribes, your elders and your officers; every man of Israel’ – kol ish Yisrael (29:9b); a list which continues through the next verse (29:10):

Your children, your wives and your sojourner, who is in the midst of your camp; from those who cut wood to those who draw water.

The list suggests total inclusion of all those who are part of the ‘camp’, including those who are not Israelites. At the same time, it is clear that the plural subjects, Atem, ‘You’, who are being addressed, are the male Israelites: children, wives and sojourners belong to them.

So, when it comes to the readers of this passage, in particular, those who live within the Jewish ‘camp’ today, understanding the text as addressed to them ha-yom, ‘today’, is a very different experience for male and female readers. While men can identify themselves as the active subjects, women are presented with a challenge: do I consider myself included, along with my husband, or do I want to take active steps to be included in my own right? And for those women who do not have a husband, who are single or widowed or divorced or lesbian, do I feel part of the camp? Do I want to be part of the camp? Can I include myself? What do I need to do to be included?

And what of Va-yeilech, the second part of the double portion (Deuteronomy, chapter 31)? At first sight, preoccupied as it is with the final days of Moses and the impending succession of Joshua, it seems to be less relevant for ha-yom, today. And yet, the opening two words suggest something else: Va-yeilech Moshe – ‘Then Moses went’. An echo, at the end of the wilderness wanderings, of the first journey of the first ancestor – Va-yeilech Avram – ‘Then Avram went’ (Leich L’cha, Genesis 12:4) – the simple phrase reminds us that, ultimately, each individual is challenged to go on a journey; albeit, individual women have the additional challenge of including themselves. That is why the first part of the double portion, begins Atem nitzavim – ‘You are stationed’: to be stationed is to stand in readiness for departure. And the existential message is even more powerful: it is not possible to stand still, to stay where we are; from a Jewish perspective, ‘being’ is inextricably linked with ‘doing’ and moving forward into the future. I am, therefore I act. Indeed, at the heart of Nitzavim, the reader is presented with a set of choices: between life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse (30:15-19), and so, ultimately, unless we make the choice to die, we are challenged – each one of us – to live: u’vacharta ba-chayyim ‘therefore you shall choose in life!’ (30:19).

Tikvah Sarah, Elizabeth. "Parashat Nitzavim-Vayelech 5773." Leo Baeck College, Weekly D'Var Torah. (Viewed on September 20, 2014). http://www.lbc.ac.uk/Table/Weekly-D-var-Torah/

Vayakhel, Exodus 35:1-38:20

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

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?

By Rabbi Laura Geller

This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel , is very familiar because much in it repeats what we read several weeks ago. In the earlier portions, God commands Moses to erect a Mishkan,a portable sanctuary, with all the ritual objects furnishing it, the Ark, the menorah, the sinks for the priests to wash before they begin their daily tasks, and then gives detailed instructions about the priestly vestments.

In this week’s portion, the Torah tells us that the people did exactly as God commanded Moses. But instead of reporting: “And Moses did as God commanded,” the text provides another very detailed description of each of the objects and clothes, repeating with great specificity everything we’ve already heard. Dr. Carol Meyers labels the earlier instructions “prescriptive Tabernacle texts” because they prescribe what is to be done, while our portions, which describe the implementation of the instructions, are called “descriptive Tabernacle texts” (see The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss [New York: URJ Press, 2008], p. 521). What separates the two accounts is the sin of the Golden Calf.

Why does there need to be such detail? Maybe it is to reassure us that even after such an egregious sin as the idol worship of the Golden Calf, not only has God forgiven us, but also, we’ve finally gotten it right. We shouldn’t worship a golden idol, but we can use gold and other valuable resources to symbolize God’s presence among us through the Mishkan. And apparently we did, as we read: “. . . all the artisans who were engaged in the tasks of the sanctuary came . . . and said to Moses, ‘The people are bringing more than is needed for the task entailed in the work that YHVH has commanded to be done.’ Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp: ‘Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary’ ” (Exodus 36:4–6).

But perhaps we are simply meant to learn that attention to detail is important. Anyone who has ever remodeled a home or redecorated a room knows how many details are involved: color, texture, shape, size, material, and so on.

There is one detail that I have always found fascinating. “He made the laver [sink] of copper and its stand of copper, from the mirrors [mar’ot] of the women who performed tasks at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting” (38:8). B’mar’ot hatzov’ot literally means “the mirrors of legions,” but as The Women’s Torah Commentary explains, because hatzov’ot is grammatically feminine, the text must be talking about women (see The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, p. 536).

Rashi, the famous eleventh century commentator, notices that only here in the whole story of the making of the Mishkan do we have an account of a specific gift and what it was used for. He imagines a dialogue between Moses and God:

“Mirrors?” Moses demands of God, “The women are bringing mirrors? How dare they bring these trinkets of vanity into a holy place? I forbid it! Mirrors just lead to lustful thoughts!”

But God intervenes: “Accept them, for these are more precious to me than anything because through them the women set up many legions [i.e., through the children they gave birth to] in Egypt.” When their husbands were weary from backbreaking labor, the women would go and bring them food and drink. Then the women would take the mirrors and each one would see herself with her husband in the mirror, and she would seduce him with words, saying, “I am more beautiful than you.” And in this way they aroused their husbands’ desire and would copulate with them, conceiving and giving birth there, as it is said: “Under the apple tree I aroused you” (Song 8:5). This is [what is meant by] that which is said, “with the mirrors of those who set up legions, that is, the mirrors of those who had lots of children” (see Rashi on Exodus 38:8).

Imagine what it must have been like for the Israelite men forced to do backbreaking, demeaning work. Their spirits were destroyed; they had lost all hope for the future. It was the women who kept the men’s will to live alive. Even in those horrible circumstances, the women would beautify themselves with the help of these mirrors, using makeup from with whatever dyes and rouges they could find, making themselves attractive to their partner. When the men came home, exhausted and dehumanized, their wives would arouse them by flirting, by playing erotic games, by looking with their husbands into the mirrors, by teasing “which one of us is more attractive?”

These women didn’t give up hope for a different future. They were responsible for our spiritual survival. It was their initiative, courage, and faith that led to the next generation. Perhaps because of that the Talmud tells us: “It was because of the righteousness of the women that we were redeemed from Egypt” (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 11b).

That detail about the mirrors reminds us of the special role that women played in the liberation of our people.

Geller, Laura. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Fairest of Them All?" ReformJudaism.org. (Viewed on February 22, 2014). http://www.reformjudaism.org/mirror-mirror-wall-who%E2%80%99s-fairest-them-all

Team-Building

By Rabbi Jonathon Sacks

How do you remotivate a demoralized people? How do you put the pieces of a broken nation back together again? That was the challenge faced by Moses in this week’s parsha.

The key word here is vayakhel, “Moses gathered.” Kehillah means community. A kehillah or kahal is a group of people assembled for a given purpose. That purpose can be positive or negative, constructive or destructive. The same word that appears at the beginning of this week’s parsha as the beginning of the solution, appeared in last week’s parsha as the start of the problem: “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered [vayikahel] around Aaron and said, ‘Make us a god to lead us. As for this man Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’”

The difference between the two kinds of kehillah is that one results in order, the other in chaos. Coming down the mountain to see the golden calf, we read that “Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies.” The verb פרע, like the similar פרא, means “loose, unbridled, unrestrained.”

There is an assembly that is disciplined, task-oriented and purposeful. And there is an assembly that is a mob. It has a will of its own. People in crowds lose their sense of self-restraint. They get carried along in a wave of emotion. Normal deliberative thought-processes become bypassed by the more primitive feelings or the group. There is, as neuroscientists put it, an “amygdala hijack.” Passions run wild.

There have been famous studies of this: Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: a study of the popular mind (1895), and Wilfred Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1914). One of the most haunting works on the subject is Jewish Nobel prize-winner Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power (1960, English translation 1962).

Vayakhel is Moses’ response to the wild abandon of the crowd that gathered around Aaron and made the golden calf (the building of the Tabernacle was, of course, God’s command, not Moses. The fact that it is set out as Divine command before the story of the Golden Calf is intended to illustrate the principle that “God creates the cure before the disease” (Megillah 13b)). He does something fascinating. He does not oppose the people, as he did initially when he saw the golden calf. Instead, he uses the same motivation that drove them in the first place. They wanted to create something that would be a sign that God was among them: not on the heights of a mountain but in the midst of the camp. He appeals to the same sense of generosity that made them offer up their gold ornaments. The difference is that they are now acting in accordance with God’s command, not their own spontaneous feelings.

He asks the Israelites to make voluntary contributions to the construction of the Tabernacle, the Sanctuary, the Mikdash. They do so with such generosity that Moses has to order them to stop. If you want to bond human beings so that they act for the common good, get them to build something together. Get them to undertake a task that they can only achieve together, that none can do alone.

The power of this principle was demonstrated in a famous social-scientific research exercise carried out in 1954 by Muzafer Sherif and others from the University of Oklahoma, known as the Robbers’ Cave experiment. Sherif wanted to understand the dynamics of group conflict and prejudice. To do so, he and his fellow researchers selected a group of 22 white, eleven-year-old boys, none of whom had met one another before. They were taken to a remote summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. They were randomly allocated into two groups.

Initially neither group knew of the existence of the other. They were staying in cabins far apart. The first week was dedicated to team-building. The boys hiked and swam together. Each group chose a name for itself – they became The Eagles and the Rattlers. They stencilled the names on their shirts and flags.

Then, for four days they were introduced to one another through a series of competitions. There were trophies, medals and prizes for the winners, and nothing for the losers. Almost immediately there was tension between them: name-calling, teasing, and derogatory songs. It got worse. Each burned the other’s flag and raided their cabins. They objected to eating together with the others in the same dining hall.

Stage 3 was called the ‘integration phase’. Meetings were arranged. The two groups watched films together. They lit Fourth-of-July firecrackers together. The hope was that these face-to-face encounters would lessen tensions and lead to reconciliation. They didn’t. Several broke up with the children throwing food at one another.

In stage 4, the researchers arranged situations in which a problem arose that threatened both groups simultaneously. The first was a blockage in the supply of drinking water to the camp. The two groups identified the problem separately and gathered at the point where the blockage had occurred. They worked together to remove it, and celebrated together when they succeeded.

In another, both groups voted to watch some films. The researchers explained that the films would cost money to hire, and there was not enough in camp funds to do so. Both groups agreed to contribute an equal share to the cost. In a third, the coach on which they were travelling stalled, and the boys had to work together to push it. By the time the trials were over, the boys had stopped having negative images of the other side. On the final bus ride home, the members of one team used their prize money to buy drinks for everyone.

Similar outcomes have emerged from other studies. The conclusion is revolutionary. You can turn even hostile factions into a single cohesive group so long as they are faced with a shared challenge that all can achieve together but none can do alone.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, former President of Yeshiva University, once remarked that he knew of only one joke in the Mishnah, the statement that “Scholars increase peace in the world” (Berakhot 64a). Rabbis are known for their disagreements. How then can they be said to increase peace in the world?

I suggest that the passage is not a joke but a precisely calibrated truth. To understand it we must read the continuation: “Scholars increase peace in the world as it is said, ‘All your children shall be learned of the Lord and great will be the peace of your children’ (Isaiah 54: 13). Read not ‘your children’ but ‘your builders.’” When scholars become builders they create peace. If you seek to create a community out of strongly individualistic people, you have to turn them into builders. That is what Moses did in Vayakhel.

Team-building, even after a disaster like the golden calf, is neither a mystery nor a miracle. It is done by setting the group a task, one that speaks to their passions and one no subsection of the group can achieve alone. It must be constructive. Every member of the group must be able to make a unique contribution and then feel that it has been valued. Each must be able to say, with pride: I helped make this.

That is what Moses understood and did. He knew that if you want to build a team, create a team that builds.

Sacks, Jonathon. "Team-Building." OrthodoxUnion.org. (Viewed on February 22, 2014). http://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/team-building/

Mishpatim, Exodus 21:1-24:18

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

We Are The Narrative

By Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses

Every year at this time it happens: I become disappointed in the Torah.

Thunder and lightning and voices of revelation at Sinai are followed by the plodding specificity of the civil and religious laws of Mishpatim. The Torah goes from narrative to endless laws and detailed instructions for a good portion of the remainder of the five books.

Going from Yitro to Mishpatim we come down the mountain with a real thud. Gone are the salacious family stories of Genesis and the dramatic national birth story of Exodus. Starting with this week’s parashah, sitting in synagogue week after week, one can hear yawns all around. What happened to the joy of sheer story? Why do we move from aggadah (narrative) to halakhah (law)?

To complicate matters further: after all the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt, the very first laws of Mishpatim concern slave ownership. Not the prohibition of owning slaves, as one might want and expect, but the rules detailing the treatment of a slave, slavery an institution that is simply presumed by the text. After all that, after all those years enslaved, after witnessing the plagues, after passing through the red sea to escape slavery, why in the world are the Israelites permitted the ownership of other human beings?

One can understand this shift from Sinai to laws concerning slavery in two interrelated ways:

Misphatim begins with the following law: “When you acquire a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free.” (Exodus 21:2)

It’s almost as if they are given a law in which they are commanded to transform, to revolutionize their own consciousness. You can own a slave, but after seven years, you must set that slave free. You were a slave, and now you will be a master. And as a master you must liberate. As God liberated you, so must you set your slave free–a clear example of tzelem elokim (being created in the image of God), or to put it another words, imatatio dei (the imitation of God).

The shift from narrative to law begins to have meaning in the context of this same shift of power. Until this point in the text we are told a story. We are watching these events happen to others. But, where story becomes law we are told how to live our lives. We are supremely implicated.

The very first law captures the story that the Israelites had just experienced, and yet, at the same point tells them to take control of that narrative and perform it themselves–perform exodus, perform liberation. You may be masters, but you must become liberators. Every seven years.

Indeed, the narrative that frames and shapes these laws, the narrative that gives these legal details coherence, is the narrative of liberation.

Consider for example the following verses:

“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20) and “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

This is what happened to the narrative. It didn’t disappear. Rather, shifting from narrative to law shifts the very nature of the text’s address. Beforehand we were reading a story that happened to others in history. Now I read the text, and I am commanded to become an actor and to act in a certain way. A way that liberates.

If I become the subject of these laws, the story doesn’t end at all. It’s just that I, the reader, I, the one addressed by this sacred text, am now at the very center of the story. It’s supremely personal. For much of the rest of the Bible we can no longer escape into a good story, because that story has become all about us. There is no escape, only exodus. Exodus and liberation. And the endless multiplying of story.

Cohler-Esses, Dianne. "We Are the Narrative." My Jewish Learning. (Viewed on January 25, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/mishpatim_bronfman.shtml?p=0

The Slow End of Slavery

By Rabbi Jonathon Sacks

In parshat Mishpatim we witness one of the great stylistic features of the Torah, its transition from narrative to law. Until now the book of Exodus has been primarily narrative: the story of the enslavement of the Israelites and their journey to freedom. Now comes detailed legislation, the “constitution of liberty.”

This is not accidental but essential. In Judaism, law grows out of the historical experience of the people. Egypt was the Jewish people’s school of the soul; memory was its ongoing seminar in the art and craft of freedom. It taught them what it felt like to be on the wrong side of power. “You know what it feels like to be a stranger,” says a resonant phrase in this week’s parsha (23: 9). Jews were the people commanded never to forget the bitter taste of slavery so that they would never take freedom for granted. Those who do so, eventually lose it.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the opening of today’s parsha. We have been reading about the Israelites’ historic experience of slavery. So the social legislation of Mishpatim begins with slavery. What is fascinating is not only what it says but what it doesn’t say.

It doesn’t say: abolish slavery. Surely it should have done. Is that not the whole point of the story thus far? Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. He, as the Egyptian viceroy Tzofenat Paneach, threatens them with slavery. Generations later, when a pharaoh arises who “knew not Joseph,” the entire Israelite people become Egypt’s slaves. Slavery, like vengeance, is a vicious circle that has no natural end. Why not, then, give it a supernatural end? Why did God not say: There shall be no more slavery?

The Torah has already given us an implicit answer. Change is possible in human nature but it takes time: time on a vast scale, centuries, even millennia. There is little doubt that in terms of the Torah’s value system the exercise of power by one person over another, without their consent, is a fundamental assault against human dignity. This is not just true of the relationship between master and slave. It is even true, according to many classic Jewish commentators, of the relationship between king and subjects, rulers and ruled. According to the sages it is even true of the relationship between God and human beings. The Talmud says that if God really did coerce the Jewish people to accept the Torah by “suspending the mountain over their heads” (Shabbat 88a) that would constitute an objection to the very terms of the covenant itself. We are God’s avadim, servants, only because our ancestors freely chose to be (see Joshua 24, where Joshua offers the people freedom, if they so chose, to walk away from the covenant then and there).

So slavery is to be abolished, but it is a fundamental principle of God’s relationship with us that he does not force us to change faster than we are able to do so of our own free will. So Mishpatim does not abolish slavery but it sets in motion a series of fundamental laws that will lead people, albeit at their own pace, to abolish it of their own accord. Here are the laws:

“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything . . . But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. (Ex. 21: 2-6)

What is being done in these laws? First, a fundamental change is taking place in the nature of slavery. No longer is it a permanent status; it is a temporary condition. A Hebrew slave goes free after seven years. He or she knows this. Liberty awaits the slave not at the whim of the master but by divine command. When you know that within a fixed time you are going to be free, you may be a slave in body but in your own mind you are a free human being who has temporarily lost his or her liberty. That in itself is revolutionary.

This alone, though, was not enough. Six years are a long time. Hence the institution of Shabbat, ordained so that one day in seven a slave could breathe free air: no one could command him to work:

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you . . . nor your male or female servant . . . so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deut. 5: 12-14)

But the Torah is acutely aware that not every slave wants liberty. This too emerges out of Israelite history. More than once in the wilderness the Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt. They say: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” (Num. 11: 5). As Rashi points out, the phrase “at no cost” [chinam] cannot be understood literally. They paid for it with their labour and their lives. “At no cost” means “free of mitzvot,” of commands, obligations, duties. Freedom carries a highest price, namely, moral responsibility. Many people have shown what Erich Fromm called “fear of freedom.” Rousseau spoke of “forcing people to be free” – a view that led in time to the reign of terror following the French revolution.

The Torah does not force people to be free but it does insist on a ritual of stigmatization. If a slave refuses to go free, his master “shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl.” Rashi explains:

Why was the ear chosen to be pierced rather than all the other limbs of the body? Said Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai: …The ear that heard on Mount Sinai: “For to Me are the children of Israel servants” and he, nevertheless, went ahead and acquired a master for himself, should [have his ear] pierced! Rabbi Shimon expounded this verse in a beautiful manner: Why are the door and the doorpost different from other objects of the house? G-d, in effect, said: “The door and doorpost were witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and the two doorposts, and I said: ‘For to me are the children of Israel servants’ ” —they are My servants, not servants of servants, and this person went ahead and acquired a master for himself, he shall [have his ear] pierced in their presence.

A slave may stay a slave but not without being reminded that this is not what God wants for His people. The result of these laws was to create a dynamic that would in the end lead to an abolition of slavery, at a time of free human choosing.

And so it happened. The Quakers, Methodists and Evangelicals, most famous among them William Wilberforce, who led the campaign in Britain to abolish the slave trade were driven by religious conviction, inspired not least by the biblical narrative of the Exodus, and by the challenge of Isaiah “to proclaim freedom for captives and for prisoners, release from darkness” (Is. 61: 1).

Slavery was abolished in the United States only after a civil war, and there were those who cited the Bible in defence of slavery. As Abraham Lincoln put it in his second Inaugural: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”

Yet slavery was abolished in the United States, not least because of the affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson, who wrote those words, was himself a slave-owner. Yet such is the latent power of ideals that eventually people see that by insisting on their right to freedom and dignity while denying it to others, they are living a contradiction. That is when change takes place, and it takes time.

If history tells us anything it is that God has patience, though it is often sorely tried. He wanted slavery abolished but he wanted it to be done by free human beings coming to see of their own accord the evil it is and the evil it does. The God of history, who taught us to study history, had faith that eventually we would learn the lesson of history: that freedom is indivisible. We must grant freedom to others if we truly seek it for ourselves.

Sacks, Jonathon. "The Slow End of Slavery." OU Torah. (Viewed on January 25, 2014). http://www.ou.org/torah/article/the_slow_end_of_slavery#.UuUIsdLFLDc

Yitro, Exodus 18:1-20:23

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

Women and Revelation

By Judith Plaskow

Read from a feminist perspective, Yitro contains one of the most painful verses in the Torah. At the formative moment in Jewish history, when presumably the whole people of Israel stands in awe and trembling at the base of Mount Sinai waiting for God to descend upon the mountain and establish the covenant, Moses turns to the assembled community and says, “Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman” (19:15). Moses wants to ensure that the people are ritually prepared to receive God’s presence, and an emission of semen renders both a man and his female partner temporarily unfit to approach the sacred (see Leviticus 15:16-18). But Moses does not say, “Men and women do not go near each other.” Instead, at this central juncture in the Jewish saga, he renders women invisible as part of the congregation about to enter into the covenant.

These words are deeply troubling for at least two reasons. First, they are a paradigm of the treatment of women as “other,” both elsewhere in this portion and throughout the Torah. Again and again, the Torah seems to assume that the Israelite nation consists only of male heads of household. It records the experiences of men, but not the experiences of women. For example, the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (20:14), presupposes a community of male hearers.

Second, entry into the covenant at Sinai is not just a one-time event, but an experience to be reappropriated by every generation (Deuteronomy 29:13-14). Every time the portion is chanted, whether as part of the annual cycle of Torah readings or as a special reading for Shavuot, women are thrust aside once again, eavesdropping on a conversation among men, and between men and God. The text thus potentially evokes a continuing sense of exclusion and disorientation in women. The whole Jewish people supposedly stood at Sinai. Were we there? Were we not there? If we were there, what did we hear when the men heard “do not go near a woman”? If we were not there originally, can we be there now? Since we are certainly part of the community now, how could we not have been there at that founding moment?

Given the seriousness of these questions, it is important to note the larger narrative context of Moses’ injunction to the men not to go near a woman. When the Israelites arrive at Sinai on the third new moon after leaving Egypt, Moses twice ascends the mountain to talk with God. After he brings God the report that the people have agreed to accept the covenant, God gives Moses careful instructions for readying everyone for the moment of revelation: “Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow,” God says. “Let them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day; for on the third day Adonai will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai” (19:10-11). It is striking that God’s instructions to Moses are addressed to the whole community. It is Moses who changes them, who glosses God’s message, who assumes that the instructions are meant for only half the people. Thus, at this early stage in Jewish history, Moses filters and interprets God’s commands through a patriarchal lens. His words are a paradigm of the treatment of women, but a complex one. They show how Jewish tradition has repeatedly excluded women, but also the way in which that exclusion must be understood as a distortion of revelation.

Interestingly, the Rabbis seem to have been disturbed by the implication of women’s absence from Sinai, because they read women into the text in a variety of ways. B’reishit Rabbah 28:2 understands Exodus 19:3 (“Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the children of Israel”) to mean that “the house of Jacob” refers to the women and “the children of Israel” refers to the men. According to the midrash, the order of the verse suggests that God sent Moses to the women with the Torah first. Perhaps, the sages speculate, God regretted the mistake of not directly giving Eve the commandment concerning the forbidden fruit and so resolved not to repeat it. Besides, the Rabbis note, women are more careful in observing religious precepts, and they are the ones who will instruct their children. Rashi, commenting on the Mishnah (Shabbat 9:3; BT Shabbat 86a), interprets Exodus 19:15 (“Do not go near a woman”) as a stricture specifically designed to enable Israel’s women to be present at Sinai. Since semen loses its power to create impurity after three days, Moses’ instruction to the men guarantees that women will remain ritually pure, even if they discharge residual semen during the Revelation. In other words, without ever naming Moses’ distortion of God’s words directly, the Rabbis sought to reverse its effects.

Several lessons can be drawn from this. One is the inseparability of revelation and interpretation. There is no revelation without interpretation; the foundational experience of revelation also involves a crucial act of interpretation. Second, we learn that the process of interpretation is ongoing. What Moses does, the Rabbis in this case seek to undo. While they reiterate and reinforce the exclusion of women in many contexts, they mitigate it in others. Third, insofar as the task of interpretation is continuing, it now lies with us. If women’s absence from Sinai is unthinkable to the Rabbis–despite the fact that they repeatedly reenact that absence in their own works–how much more must it be unthinkable to women and men today who function in communities in which women are full Jews? We have the privilege and the burden of recovering the divine words reverberating behind the silences in the text, recreating women’s understandings of revelation throughout Jewish history.

Plaskow, Judith. "Women and Revelation." My Jewish Learning. (Viewed January 18, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/URJ--Yitro.shtml?p=0

Not Norms for Everyone

By Jon D. Levenson

The Decalogue [the Greek word for the Ten Commandments] is part of a specific covenantal relationship, born out of the Exodus, between God and Israel. It does not purport to be a set of universal norms. To act as if everybody in the world came out of Egypt, everyone in the world is required to observe Shabbat and everyone in the world was brought into the land of Israel would make a travesty of the actual biblical narrative. The truth is that neither biblical nor rabbinic traditions speak of the Decalogue as applicable to universal humanity. In rabbinic tradition, there is a universal set of norms, but it is the “Seven Noahide Commandments.” Among different Christian communities, the understanding of the Ten Commandments varies widely. Sometimes they are seen to include ceremonial norms that applied to the ancient Hebrew commonwealth but were superseded by the Gospel, but other times they are thought to apply in full force to Christians today. Given the prominence of Protestantism, and especially the Calvinist emphasis on the Old Testament in American culture, it is not surprising that the Decalogue has widespread significance and high prestige here. It is often mistakenly detached from its covenantal framework and treated instead as a code that binds society as a whole. Within the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people, of course, scrupulous observance of the Decalogue remains essential.

Levenson, Jon D. "Not Norms for Everyone." Excerpt from 10 Commandments 2.0 by Joan Alpert. Moment Magazine. (Viewed on January 18, 2014). http://www.momentmag.com/10-commandments-2-0/3/

Chanukah Lights

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Chanukah 2011

Chanukah is a holiday of community in which we rededicate ourselves to each other and to the things that are truly important to us. A time in which we honour and acknowledge difficult times we have gone through, but remember that it is through acts of loving kindness that give light to those around us that we are able to transcend those times.
Continue reading Chanukah Lights →

Noach, Genesis 6:9-11:32

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

Leave The Ark

By Dani Passow

Following the tragic and near-utter destruction of humankind during the deluge, Noach, the patriarch of the lone family to survive the flood, offers a sacrifice to God. The Torah records that God finds the smell of the sacrifice pleasing, but follows with a perplexing line: “God smelled the pleasing aroma, and God said in His heart: ‘I will not continue to curse the earth because of man, since the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again smite every living being, as I have done.’” Why would God respond to Noach’s sacrifice by stating that man’s heart is evil? Wouldn’t this statement about the innate nature of humankind have been more appropriate as a response to the corruption that precipitated the flood?

To better understand God’s reaction to the sacrifice, we need to explore Noach’s prior behavior. When God first tells Noach to build the ark, the design instructions include the command, “You shall make a window (tzohar) for the ark.” The existence of the tzohar begs Noach to bear witness to the suffering taking place outside of the ark. But Noach doesn’t seem to hear this message. Instead of being aware of the events unfolding outside of the ark, he goes out of his way to remain oblivious. We read that as the storm settles, “Noach removed the covering of the ark;” however, at no point was Noach instructed to place a cover over the ark. It seems that rather than stare the suffering of others in the face, Noach hides from it and uses the ark as a cocoon to shelter himself from the horrors being suffered by the rest of humanity.

Noach’s act of closing himself off from the world is understandable. After the waters have subsided, Noach is so afraid of seeing the devastation that lies beyond the threshold of his wooden bubble that he needs to be commanded by God to leave the ark. Perhaps from the small view he sees when uncovering the ark, Noach is traumatized into paralysis, physically unable to leave his protected world and encounter the destruction outside. Having anticipated this anguish, Noach may have felt the need to remain isolated during the flood, and thus covered the tzohar in order to have the strength to carry out his God-given mission of securing the continued existence of life on earth.

But such action is only a compromise; ideally Noach would have let the tzohar remain uncovered and witnessed the true extent of the suffering. Had he done so, he likely would have been so devastated by what he saw that bringing a sacrifice in gratitude for his own salvation would have seemed inappropriate. Indeed, God’s statement to Noach upon receiving the sacrifice indicates that Noach has distanced himself too greatly from the rest of humanity. How, in the face of so much death and destruction, God implies, do you, Noach, have the gall to bring a sacrifice? The moment of global mourning, Gods seems to be saying, should trump a personal religious expression of thanksgiving.

In our everyday lives, what Noach-like compromises do we make? In what ways do we walk around in our own personal arks choosing to protect the emotional and material well-being of ourselves and our families at the expense of engaging with the suffering and needs of others? What efforts can we make to ensure that nurturing our own spirituality doesn’t overshadow our obligation to be aware of the dire need in the world—the dark reality that 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day and that 925 million people are undernourished? Living in a globalized world where technology affords us the ability to see the real-time distress of so many around us, have we internalized God’s message of the tzohar and used these tools to pay attention to the plight of those facing challenges around the globe? When, like Noach, we worry that we will be traumatized by trying to address the suffering of others and therefore seek to fortify ourselves for the work ahead of us, do we go too far and retreat too deeply into the mode of self-care, or are we able to strike the proper balance?

We learn from Noach that we are challenged by God to expect to be traumatized in our efforts to heal the world. Truly paying attention to suffering is risky. It may sap our emotional energy, require us to make radical lifestyle changes, and even raise deeply troubling theological questions about justice. It is therefore normal to wish to shelter ourselves from time to time so as not to be overwhelmed; but God is constantly calling, “Leave the Ark!

Passow, Dani. "Noach." Dvar Tzedek. American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on October 6, 2013). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/noach.html

The Tower of Babel

By Erin Brouse

Following the account of the flood and God’s destruction of the world, the narrative of the Tower of Babel is found in this week’s parsha.  In the story, everyone is said to have spoken the same language.  As people migrated from the east, they settled in the land of Shinar.  The people there sought to make bricks and build a city and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for themselves, so that they not be scattered over the world.  God came down to look at the city and tower, and remarked that as one people with one language, nothing that they sought would be out of their reach.  He punished them by confounding their speech so that they could not understand each other and scattered them over the face of the earth.

The development of “otherness,” of consciousness, of difference, is a central theme in this parsha, following the theme developed in parsha B’reishit.  In the garden, we first learn that God created human beings in his image, “man and woman he created them,” an androgynous whole.   God then decides that Adam needs a partner so he is not alone, and Eve is created from his flesh.  Through relationship with another, partnership, Adam becomes whole: he becomes conscious of himself.  Similarly, consciousness of the world, of good and evil, comes after Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  They become aware of the world around them.  Their relationship with each other and with God is forever changed as a result.  In Noach, with the story of the Tower of Babel, linguistic difference, the confounding of language, represents the birth of nations.  We move beyond self-consciousness, beyond the awareness of otherness in our intimate relationships, to the consciousness and identification that accompanies a language group.   We become “other” in the largest sense.

What is most interesting about this punishment from God is that it is linguistic homogeneity that is here rejected.  God punishes the people of Babel for their efforts to remain a homogeneous group, for their imperialistic desire to prevent difference.  Difference was God’s ultimate aim, and the hubris that motivated the construction of the Tower and the ambition to “make a name for themselves” was contrary to God’s plan.   Diversity, “otherness,” was required to provide humankind with the conditions it needed to prosper and thrive.   Just as the otherness Eve provided Adam to fulfill our intimate needs as individuals, otherness on a larger scale allows us to feel the bonds of community. The development of community relies on the existence of other communities to which we distinguish ourselves.  We become part of this group, and not that group.

Just as our communities are made-up of individuals, different from each other but united by common language, so too the communities of the world are linked by a common humanity.  Their existence is what allows the other to thrive.   Without them, we cannot feel the important human connection that community brings, and we are deprived of the opportunity to think beyond ourselves and our parochial interests.  We need otherness to realise ourselves.