Drashot

What would it mean to experience God’s presence in our lives? How would we know? In this week’s Torah portion, “On the day that the Tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the Tabernacle, the Tent of the Pact; and in the evening it rested over the Tabernacle in the likeness of fire until morning. And whenever the cloud lifted from the Tent, the Israelites would set out accordingly; and at the spot where the cloud settled, there the Israelites would make camp.” (Numbers 9:15-17) 

For the ancient Israelites, God was present as a cloud by day and a fire by night. When the cloud hovered over the Tabernacle the Israelites camped, when it lifted they moved on. 

Perhaps our decisions would be easier if we had such a clear sign from God. But unfortunately we don’t. When we have a difficult decision to make we cannot look outward for a sign, we must look inward, quietly and try to discern the still small voice that resides within us. 

When we do we may find guidance, for God is within us, not outside us.

This Sunday we celebrate Shavuot, the holiday where we celebrate receiving Torah at Sinai and this Shabbat we begin the fourth book of the Torah, Numbers, or in Hebrew Bamidbar (In the Wilderness).
This week’s Torah portion begins with these words, “God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai,” (Bamidbar 1:1) In late March I returned to Israel with the Junior and Senior classes of the Jewish Community High School for the first time since the COVID pandemic began. One of the highlights of the trip is an evening hike in the desert, near Masada. We require that students leave their cellphones behind so they are not distracted. In a dark and quiet spot we stop, have the students sit quietly, and look up at the stars. After a few moments we ask them to consider why Torah was given in the wilderness. After some reflection they answer, because it is an open and free space.
This is the same answer our sages shared in Bamidbar Rabah, a collection of rabbinic commentaries from late antiquity: “Just as [wilderness] is free to all the inhabitants of the world, so too are the words of Torah free to them, Another explanation: ‘And God spoke to Moses in the Sinai Wilderness’ — Anyone who does not make themselves ownerless like the wilderness cannot acquire the wisdom and the Torah.”
Our students experienced one of the truths of the wilderness. It is in the quiet and the stillness, without distractions that we can tune in to our inner voice and the majesty and wonder of the world that God created.
The challenge is to find ways to make ourselves “ownerless” and “free,” to rid ourselves of the distractions of daily life so we can connect to the profound and sublime voice that whispers softly in our ear.

Some weeks it is hard to write about Torah. Tonight, as I write this I am trying to come to grips with the news that 18 children have been murdered, gunned down, in an elementary school in Texas and my heart is heavy with the pain of innocent children murdered and families shattered in an instant. What makes it all worse is that we know this is not the last time, but another link in a chain of murder and gun violence. We know there will be another mass killing, as surely as the night follows the day. This week’s Torah portion is about the blessings that God will grant the Israelites if they follow God’s laws. It continues with this, “I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone; I will give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross your land.” (Leviticus 26:6) Then the Torah portion continues with the curses that will befall the Israelites if they do not follow God’s mitzvot. I do not believe that God keeps books. That if we do exactly as we are told everything will be fine. That is too simplistic. Human beings have free will and can make choices. But something is terribly wrong in our land, when parents cannot send their children to school and be certain they will return home again safely. I am afraid we have lost our way. Not with God, but with ourselves. How has life become so cheap? Guns so rampant, and the murder of children so acceptable? Acceptable because we are doing nothing to stop it from happening again. Unless we come together to bring this violence under control we may never lie down untroubled.

We inhabit a culture that seems to have no limits, that seems to want to overthrow all limits. Technology allows us to connect across time and space; to enjoy an endless supply of entertainment. It allows old friends to reconnect and activists to organize with greater freedom than ever before. These are benefits. It also enables us to work from home, all the time, and have no separation between work time and private time. People are ruthlessly evaluated for their utility. Whole categories of work have arisen and disappeared for the last 200 years, since the industrial revolution began. These are some of the deficits of a culture with no limits. 

This week’s Torah portion presents a different perspective: “Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of God: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (Leviticus 25:3-4) 

The land cannot be endlessly exploited; it must be given a rest for an entire year, a sabbatical. And every 50 years, the Jubilee, all debts are forgiven and all land holdings are redistributed to their original owners and families. 

Wealth can be acquired, but not in perpetuity. Did this ever happen or was it just a vision of society in our Torah? We don’t know. But we do know this, the Sabbath for human beings, the seventh day of rest shocked the Romans who came to Judea. They could understand why the Judeans would take a day of rest but they could not comprehend why they allowed their slaves and servants to rest also. This was inconceivable to the Romans. 

Of course, we Jews, the descendents of the Judeans, are still here and the Roman Empire is long gone. Perhaps there is something special, meaningful and long lasting about a culture that respects limits, for the land, for animals, and financial transactions and for people.

During the first year or so of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of us were minimizing our contact with others and those who were lucky enough were working from home, the days seemed to run together, to blend into each other without differentiation. What kept me anchored in time was Shabbat. Every Friday I would prepare for Shabbat: bake challah, cook a special meal, and clean the house. Friday evening was sacred time, ushered in by blessings over candles, wine and challah, followed by a leisurely family meal filled with conversation and connection. Saturday was spent without a computer or cell phone, in synagogue or at home with family, peace and quiet. Shabbat gave that long stretch of time a form and a shape. In this week’s Torah portion we read, “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of ADONAI, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions. On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion. You shall do no work; it shall be a sabbath of יהוה throughout your settlements.” (Leviticus 23:2-3) Shabbat and the holy days are sacred time and are meant to stand apart from the rest of the week, month or year. This sacred time gives our lives shape by giving us the space to turn toward our inner selves, our spiritual selves, those parts of us that seek something greater in life than just the day to day hustle and bustle of life. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of Shabbat as a cathedral in time, “Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn;” (A.J. Heschel, The Sabbath, P. 8) If you do not do so already try, in some small way, to begin to tune in to the holiness of sacred time, the rhythms of the Divine, the mystery and meaning that exists outside of our day to day existence.

Kedushah or holiness is one of the essential concepts in Jewish religion. What does it mean to be holy? How can we attain this state and once attained how can we sustain it? This week’s Torah portion might be considered the heart of Torah; in the middle of the middle book of Torah. God says to Moses, “Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:3) 

What follows is an enumeration of ways that the Israelites must be holy and these directives alternate between ritual commandments (commandments between God and human beings) and social commandments (commandments regulating human interaction). We must keep the Sabbath and we must also not gather in everything we grow so that the landless poor may have something to eat. We must not steal or take God’s name in vain. We must not mock the disabled or worship false Gods. 

There is a wisdom in this balance: ritual behaviors reinforce social behaviors, and both are religious behaviors. One cannot exist without the other. 

A holy society is sensitive to God and to the needs of the community. The two cannot be pulled apart. This is the wisdom of Jewish religious thought; God is the source of morality, but it is up to us to put God’s wisdom into practice in the societies we build and the social relations we construct. 

What gives our lives meaning? Is there a purpose to our existence? There is a way in which Jewish religious practice and Jewish sacred texts answer these questions by turning the mundane daily activities of life into actions that are both sacred and profound. We see this in the Jewish view of eating. Eating is essential for life and celebrated in Jewish life. But certain foods, like meat, are restricted. We cannot eat any meat we want, pork for example, nor can we eat it with anything we want… no cheeseburgers. These restrictions teach us that we should not  be controlled by our appetites. Further, the entire act of eating is sanctified by reciting a blessing before and after we eat. Thus, an action that is essential for physical survival is turned into a spiritual practice and sanctified. The same is true for sex, the subject of this week’s Torah portion. Sex is also seen as essential for life, a God-given pleasure, and thus to be celebrated. But it too is restricted. In this week’s Torah portion there is a long list of prohibited sex acts, mostly different forms of incest. Through establishing a series of restrictions, Judaism attempts to sanctify sex and elevate it from a purely physical activity to spiritual one. Our lives have meaning according to Jewish religious practice to the extent that we give them meaning by seeing all our lives as opportunities to cultivate the sacred in the mundane.

In much of the Reform movement (and in Israel, of course) we do not observe two days of Hag as do others in Jewish communities outside the land of Israel. The reason for this practice has to do with the difficulty of knowing precisely when a holy day started in ancient times, so to avoid mistakes communities outside of the Land of Israel observed two holy days rather than one. Why the Reform movement chose to go back to one day has to do with its view of redemption and Jewish life outside the Land of Israel. But what was lost in this change was the dedication of many second days to memory. On most hagim, as with Pesach, one of the practices on the final day of the hag is Yizkor, where we light a memorial candle in memory of our beloved dead and recite special prayers during the Yizkor (memorial) service. This happens four times a year, on Yom Kippur, Shemini Atzeret (the holiday that immediately follows Sukkot), the eighth day of Pesach and the second day of Shavuot. Thus, four times each year we think of those we have loved and lost, in addition to remembering them on their yahrzeit (the anniversary of their death). This dedication to memory permeates Pesach, which is focused on zecher yetziat Mitzrayim, remembering the Exodus from Egypt. Not only are we to remember the Exodus, we are to act it out as if we ourselves were liberated from slavery. This exercise in memory continues through the week that follows Pesach. Three holidays, created by the Israeli Knesset (parliament) connect Pesach, our memory of redemption from Egyptian slavery, to the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14 1948 (the 5th of Iyar in the Jewish calendar). Five days after Pesach ends, on the 27th of Nissan (April 28th this year) we observe Yom HaShoa which memorializes the suffering and the bravery of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. A week later on 4 Iyar we remember Israel’s war dead on Yom HaZikaron (memorial day) and the next day we celebrate the reestablishment of the State of Israel. From 15 Nissan until 4 Iyar, we engage in a three week long ritualized time of memory, where we remember our beloved dead, God’s redemption of the Jewish people in ancient times and our people’s depth of suffering and heights of redemption in modern times. One of the geniuses of Jewish religious life is how ritual reinforces historical memory and how historical memory reinforces Jewish identity. We make meaning out of memory.

Pesach is our annual celebration of freedom and at the Seder we retell our master story: a nation of slaves who are freed through God’s direct intervention. Most nations’ origin stories are steeped in heroism and strength. Ours begins in slavery and ends with the Pharoah humbled and the slaves going free. We move from degradation to liberation and along the way God asserts that human dignity and freedom are more important than the power of an absolute monarch. It is a message that echoes over time as people continue to strive for their freedom in the face of the evil dreams of kings, dictators and demagogues. It is a story that bears repeating, as we do each year, to remind ourselves that freedom is the state God desires for all human beings, despite what despots may wish for. This year especially, let us celebrate the struggle for freedom.

This week’s Parashat is Metzora. It involves the ways to handle impurity. This brings to mind the questions of what is really “impure” and how can any of us truly be “pure?” Times like we are going through, with an evolving pandemic and war in Ukraine makes me think that any and all of us may be sick or a potential carrier for some physical sickness. What may be even more interesting is our thoughts and behaviors and how they can affect others. When we try to be positive and helpful to others our actions can have a wonderful ripple effect that helps to make a person’s day or keep them from going over the edge. The same can be said about the other side of the coin, negative actions, attitudes or statements can hurt others and yourself. We tend to feed off of negative narratives and bring each other down or possibly to the brink. With so many potential negative catalysts we need to make a conscious effort to dwell on the positive or at the very least not add to the negative or “impure” thoughts and actions out in the world. By having more positive or “pure” thoughts in terms of how we interact with each other we can improve ourselves and others one moment at a time. So when you have the opportunity, take a moment to “share the love” or remember we all have our own trials or challenges and it is better for all of us to “breathe” and at least do no further harm. Ideally we can spread some positivity. Remember it all starts with you and how you react to what happens around us.

L’Shalom,

Larry