Shavuot - Reflections on Ruth

On Sinai, amidst thunder and lighting, great noise and a huge crowd, the people received Torah.

I can still hear the echoes of donkeys braying and goats bleating.  Parents quieting frightened babies.  Young children running around, playing games in the background.  Teenagers talking one to other, just waiting to be silenced by an adult.  People losing focus and then regaining it.

The messiness of mass revelation…

And they had their whole lives ahead of them…

The wounds from the shackles of slavery still healing…

The taste of freedom still just an imagined palate of honey and milk…not yet even touching the tongue.

When our ancestors received Torah, they were just a newly formed group of wanderers, not even sure yet what to expect.

And Torah, full of her commandments and laws.  Rules for a new way of life.  A gift.  A tree to hold fast to.  A way to live…

This was still a new relationship for them.  Still figuring things out and how to relate to this God, who both whispered and bellowed, and this Moses, who stumbled as often as he stood.  What did it even mean to be an Israelite?

No golden calves yet.  Or uprisings.  No dashed hopes or longings for Egypt. 

Just possibility and future and hope…

Revelation with the promise of redemption.

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You know, we read another story on Shavuot.  The book of Ruth.

Called the book of Chesed, the book of lovingkindness, this tale begins with sorrow.

Naomi and her family live in that Promised Land.  No longer just a hope.  This is new a reality. Generations after slavery.  Kings come and gone.  Freedom fully ours.

And Naomi’s town is auspiciously named Beit Lechem, the House of Bread.  But her windowsills are empty of rising dough.  Famine grips every home.  Until one night son turns mother and wife to husband. 

And the family leaves the land of promise.

Naomi and her family off.  Out of that promised land and back into the wilderness.  Hoping for a better life there.  The desert not so bleak after all.
   
They arrive in Moab, bread baskets empty, not a drop of sweetness in sight…forbidden landscape before.

And there, misfortune falls.  Husband and sons pass away. 

Naomi left with Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. 

No options.  No protection.  No future in sight.  Calling out to God like her slave-ancestors before: Deliver me.

And so she sets out once again on a journey back to Canaan.

A journey of loss and disappointment and defeat.  In Naomi’s mind, there is nothing left.

Orpah turns back and Ruth remains.

Silent steps.  No children to cry out, no laughter seeping out of surrounding tents, no animals to bleat or bray, no thunder, no lightning.  Whispers so quiet they barely even reach the women’s ears. 

Until Ruth, frightened and alone, takes her adopted mother’s hand and says to Naomi “Your people will be my people, Your God will be my God.”

Both women dusty from the journey.  Tear lines tracked across their faces.  So much devastation.  So much sorrow.  What is left to see in this world?

No sacred letters etched on stone in the mountains above.  No great leader.  No voice of God.  No scrap of holy text. 

Just two women with empty pockets, who lost everything.  Alone and a little desperate.  Turning to one another.  And making a new covenant. 

And Ruth intones:  That story you sung to me while hanging laundry.  That God you cried out to at my husband’s grave.  That people whose language you speak.  That journey you traced.  All that you claim as yours, I claim as mine.

And Ruth promises Naomi redemption.  And Naomi can only taste bitterness. 

But the two walk on into a town that once again fills its bread baskets.  And meet a people who are willing to bend every rule for the good of the women who rejoined them.

This is our Torah they tell them.  And Ruth grasps it.  This is her tree.  And she holds fast to it. 

The townspeople sing to them quietly, words of Psalms “She who went out weeping carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves.”

This is a new revelation, born not out of promise but out of the knowledge that not every promise is fulfilled.

This is a new revelation, born not out of commandments, but out of broken rules and changed expectations.

This is a new revelation, born not out of noise and fanfare, but out of the quiet, even the darkness.

And this our revelation as much as the first.  Revelation happening not at one moment in time but again and again in our lives.  No matter which side of hope we find ourselves upon.  No matter which side of the promises we have made or have been made to us.

Torah revealing herself not in one form, but in many, opposites even.  Ready for us to add our stories to hers.

Parashat Bamidbar -- Tikkun

“Teach us to number our days,” declares the Psalmist, “that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12) .

For the past 45 days, we have counted.

Seven times seven, from Pesach to Shavuot…so close to the end now, 49 in sight.  Our days of counting almost complete.

This week, we begin a new book of Torah.  This Shabbat we are told to expand our enumerations: “Count people,” Torah tells us.

In Hebrew, this new book of Torah is called “Bamidbar,” in the wilderness.  In its columns, the Israelites are neither enslaved nor free.  They are the great wanderers trapped in a spiraling 40 year journey.  They are neither here nor there.  This is the desert.

In English, this new book is called Numbers, called by the Rabbis “The Book of the Census,” for it is bookended by two census takings.
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Rabbi Yaakov Culi teaches that something which is counted cannot lose identity or impact. From this interpretation, a great network of meaning is spun.

For the rabbis, the countings in Bamidbar were not just tactical exercises, but spiritual expressions.  The rabbis understood these to be the moments in which each individual Israelite became a part of history.  Each one remembered.  Black fire on white.

And yet, when I read this week’s parasha, I can’t feel poetry.  All I see is injustice.  When days are numbered, none is skipped.  But in Torah, when our people are supposedly numbered, only some are counted, others pushed aside.  These great moments of Numbers, recalled as empowering, are actually alienating and exclusive.

In the opening verses of Numbers, God commands Moses, “Take a census of the entire community of Israel.”  But, God continues, “Listing the names, every male, head by head” (Numbers 1:2). According to this, the entire community of Israel only includes Israelite men (and later priests).  What to make of this oversight?  The qualifiers continue: Only the first born priests, only Israelites of fighting age.  For generations, men and women, children and the elderly, teens and toddlers, labored through enslavement together.  Now, in the desert, they were sectioned off.  You are favored.  You are cast aside.

In Hebrew, the words for “take a census” are “s’u et rosh,” or, literally “lift the head.”  I imagine a cosmic game of duck, duck, goose taking place in the wilderness.  The people sat clustered, waiting with bated breath, tingling with anticipation, yearning for that divine tap, and with it the knowledge that they too were a part of the eidah, of God’s Israelite community.  And the disappointment they must have felt, when only some were tapped, others passed.  Their heads left fallen.

This is not the only time in which Torah says “the people,” but does not include all.  In fact, next week, as we welcome in Shavuot, the holiday on which we receive Torah at Sinai, we will read the famous revelatory passages of Exodus 19.  In these verses Moses commands “the people” in the preparations for Sinai, “do not go near a woman” (Exodus 19:14).  Clearly “this people” excludes the mothers and grandmothers, daughters and sisters, nursemaids and widows.  Duck, duck, goose…

In the 16th century, the rabbis of Safed created a tradition of Leil Tikkun Shavuot, meaning “repairing the night of Shavuot.”  This custom, of staying up all night to study, stemmed originally from the rabbis disappointment in their Israelite ancestors, who chose to sleep away the night before receiving Torah.  The mystics decided: we will now stay up all night studying Torah every Erev Shavuot in preparation for revelation.  A classic act of tikkun, repair.  Take something that you wish was done differently in the past and reenact differently—better in the present.

I am inspired by this Shavuot tradition.  If the kabbalists can rework aspects surrounding revelation and desert life, why can’t we?   Biblically only some were counted, others left marginalized.  And so, let us include.  Let us make whole.  Let us repair.

The rabbis clearly saw the dual nature of counting—both external (How many are we?) and internal (Who are we?).

On an external level, we at TIOH see counting as a value.  We are a diverse and inclusive community and pride ourselves on being such.  Our membership rolls are, in and of themselves, a tikkun to our ancestors’ missed opportunities to number fully their community.  We reject an exclusionary Torah or Judaism.  We seek to welcome everyone who walks in our doors.  In this community, every child, every man, every woman, every newborn, every senior citizen is not only counted, but also celebrated.  We are Jews by birth and Jews by choice, Jews of color, Jews of European descent and Jewish of Sephardic descent.  Intermarried, single, gay, straight.  And our efforts are ongoing.  This past Tuesday night, our Temple took another step toward full repair.  Our board unanimously passed a resolution in support of marriage equality.  Let every family be counted in this community, they said.

On an internal level, as well, we are left now to do our own spiritual work.  This tikkun is each of ours alone.  This is the time for both counting and receiving Torah.  This is the time to take stock of our own internal lives.  Let us claim our own Tikkun.  Our ancestors ignored, pushed aside, and made invisible members of their own community.  We too ignore, push aside, and make invisible aspects of our own selves.

Which aspects of ourselves have we pushed to the side?
What internal work have we chosen to ignore?
What difficult conversations have we left unspoken?
What needs have we made invisible?
Which feelings have we left unexpressed?

This is a time for counting that which has been left uncounted.  A time for numbering and naming.  On this Shabbat let us be reminded: Our work toward a desert tikkun always holds the reward of a Promised Land.

“Teach us to number our days,” declares the Psalmist, “that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Teach us to number ourselves, we learn, that we may live lives of fullness.

Parashat Emor -- Human Experience

A few weeks ago, I opened up the text of Parashat Emor to study with Rose Kauffman-Skloff in preparation for her fifth grade d’var torah, which she delivered to the Religious School community last Sunday. Together, we read these words, which God instructed Moses to tell the Israelites “These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Eternal One, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (Leviticus 23:1). Rose was wide-eyed to discover that many of the holidays she celebrates today were described in detail in the Torah. “Can you believe we’ve been celebrating these holidays for so long?”

This ancient Torah portion not only tells us when to celebrate but how to celebrate these holy days: Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. Each day has its own list of commands, reflected in their prescribed active verbs: You shall elevate, you shall eat unleavened bread, you must count, you shall bring, you shall leave, you shall observe complete rest, you shall practice self-denial, you shall make offerings, you shall rejoice, you shall live in booths.

These holy days, accented by these verbs, begin to paint a picture, in miniature, of a life fully lived and experienced. The actions of these days tell the story of our lives: We regret and we rejoice, we bring and we leave, we observe and we elevate, we eat and we live. Other Jewish holy days were added to the calendar in rabbinic times. On Tisha B’Av, we mourn and we experience loss. On Chanukah, we make light and we remember.

These holy days suggest something remarkable: that all of our human experiences—from loss to delight, from low points to high, from sickness to health—all have their place not only in an individual’s lifecycle, but also in the fabric of our communal calendar. They have been embedded in the cycle of our years since ancient times. Our tradition tells us unequivocally: No matter what life brings you, you remain in the fabric of Jewish time, and in the pattern of Jewish life.

Rose summed it up well, “Some of these holidays make you sad. On some you celebrate. Some are sort of boring.” And such is life. Each of us experiences moments of disappoint. Each of us is granted moments for rejoicing. Sometimes life rolls along, unchanged, and is overwhelmingly tedious.

Torah reminds us this week that whether we confront joy or sorrow, illness or loss, pain or healing, wellness or despair, certainty or ambiguity, or life or death, we remain in sync with the sacred rhythm of our people’s time.

In this knowledge we can take some comfort. Our life’s experiences are not ours alone, but are shared with Jewish people across the globe and through out history. As Ecclesiastes teaches, “There is a time for every season under heaven.”

Parashat Sh'mini--Strange Fire

A few years ago I was given a playlist of contemporary songs that focused on biblical themes.  The focus of the music was broad—from the irreverent to the inspired.  What was notable about the music was that it was not intended to be religious in any way.  The songs were simply illustrations that biblical images and stories weave their way into our daily lives and the art we create.  This week’s Torah Portion Parashat Sh’mini is no exception.

It’s ironic that I look forward to this Torah Portion, a portion which is, at its core, deeply troubling and quite bloody.  This Torah Portion includes the only narrative incident in all of Leviticus.  It goes like this:

Now Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before Adonai strange fire, which God had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from Adonai and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of Adonai. Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what Adonai meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people." And Aaron was silent (Leviticus 10:1-3).

The story is simple.  Nadab and Abihu offer “strange fire” on the altar and God responds by consuming them in fire.  Aaron, their father, is left in stunned silence.  No explanation is given. 

Where Aaron remains reticent, Jewish commentators burst forth with explanations.  For generations, our ancestors have done back-flips trying to make sense of what Nadab and Abihu possibly could have done wrong.

I don’t love this Torah Portion for the narrative or for the traditional Jewish commentaries.  I love it for the Indigo Girls’ song “Strange Fire.”  In this song, the Indigo Girls sing:

i come to you with strange fire, i make an offering of love, the incense of my soil is burned by the fire in my blood. i come with a softer answer to the questions that lie in your path. i want to harbor you from the anger, find a refuge from the wrath.  this is a message of love. love that moves from the inside out, love that never grows tired. i come to you with strange fire.

What I love about these lyrics is simple.  They take a message of pain and anguish and quite simply, by just a few words, turn it into “a message of love.”  While Nadab and Abihu’s strange fire produced wrath, their strange fire is meant to provide “softer answers” and a “refuge from the wrath.”  This is a complete reworking of Torah!  And I delight in it.

I believe that sometimes Torah’s purpose is not to instruct, but to warn.  Why is Aaron silent?  Why does Moses’ off-putting attempt to make sense of the incident feel so incongruous?  Because this is a story in which God got it wrong.  This is a story of innocent life taken.  This is a story that is meant to evoke pain and anger.  And we are not given answers.  And it is not made right.  Torah leaves us with two choices:  To justify God’s actions by blaming Nadab and Abihu, or to learn from the injustice of the act.

Ancient Jewish commentators choose the former.  The Indigo Girls choose the latter. 

We have this power too.  What messages will we draw from our Holy Texts?  Will they be messages of blame or messages of love?  Will they be justifications or new paths?  What is the purpose of Torah in our lives? 

Will we continue to condemn the strange fire or embrace it?

Parashat Vayikra--Hearts Tied Together

This week, we begin reading Leviticus, the third book of the Torah.  In the book’s first portion, Parashat  Vayikra, we are introduced to the organized sacrificial system of the ancient Israelites.  It is true that we today are far removed from the blood and guts of Leviticus in our daily lives, and it is also true that we are deeply connected to many of Leviticus’ thoughts about community.

The sacrificial system was predicated on an almost unbelievable premise:  There was only one sanctioned place in the world at which Israelites were allowed to offer sacrifices to God.  These sacrifices represent our ancestors’ primary form of worship, and so it is significant that in their entire known world they were only able to commune with God in one place:  The Temple.  The ancient Temple, which stood in Jerusalem, functioned as the center of Israelite life in the ancient world.  (And while we know today that there were quite a few renegade sacrifice sites in existence, the intent of Leviticus is clear:  In order to form a religious community, the people had to gather together together!).

In fact, the nineteenth century’s Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (or Shadal) teaches that the main purpose of the sacrificial system was to build community.  He writes:

The Torah commands that each person should not build his own place for sacrifice, but rather that everyone should offer sacrifices in one singular place.  The purpose of this is not to belittle the act of sacrificing, but rather, it is for the good of the nation, for success, and in order to perfect our [communal] values.  Since there was only one Temple for the whole nation, everyone would gather to one place and, as a result, their hearts would be tied together in fellowship and they would be always as one group.

Shadal paints a beautiful image of community in his teaching.  His words allow us to understand the sacrificial system not as something that separates us from our ancestors, but rather as something that connects us.

We all are in search of meaning and community.  We too are looking to have our hearts “tied together in fellowship” with others.  As our world grows even bigger, this need starts even deeper.

For our ancestors, community was built into the system.  Do you want to worship God?  Go to the Temple!  Do you want to interact with other Israelites?  Go to the Temple.  With no options, the community was built and sustained.

Today, our choices are more varied.  Community is certainly not a given.  We have to choose our temple.  And then we have to choose to walk in its doors.  And then we have to choose to be active members of its community.  And, only with our work, do we come to find our hearts tied in fellowship.

This week, we are reminded by a nineteenth century rabbi that our efforts to build and connect are worthwhile.  Beyond even our own needs, we were intended to be “as one group.”  When we gather for learning and prayer, or for connecting and celebrating, we live out our ancestors’ legacy.  We take our place in the ever extending line of the Jewish people.  Shadal teaches this is our purpose.  It may also be our deliverance.

Parashat Ki Tissa--Reacting

In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tissa, when God sees the Israelites building a golden calf and worshiping it, God is filled with anger and wants to destroy the stiffnecked people (Exodus 32:9).  Moses pleads with God, saying “Adonai, do not let Your anger blaze forth against Your people!” (Exodus 23:11).  In this first snapshot, God seems to be out of control and Moses seems to be the image of calm.

Interestingly, God is easily swayed by Moses.  God not only backs down, but “renounces the punishment” (Exodus 32:14) that had been previously articulated.

On the surface, these verses tell a story of God’s irrationality and Moses’ sage leadership.  But, this only tells part of the story.

God may have been initially enraged and even dreamed up some pretty elaborate responses to the Israelites’ betrayal, but God never goes through with them (Think of the parent who finds the child destroying a wall or table with markers).

What is interesting is what happens next.  Moses goes down the mountain, sees the people dancing around their golden calf, becomes “enraged,” smashes the tablets of law that God gave him on Mount Sinai, burns up the golden calf, and makes the people drink the ashes mixed in water (Exodus 32:19-20).

This is not exactly the reasonable Moses presented a few verses earlier!  What happened to empathizing with the people who had just emerged from slavery?  What happened to reasonable leadership and learning?

In the end, I think the real lesson of this parashah lies neither in the reaction of God or nor of Moses, but in the contrast between the two.

God initially reacts with anger and plans all sorts of responses to the people’s infractions, but in the end, God is able to hear words of reason, rethink the position, and act appropriately.  For me, what is remarkable in this account is the pause that God takes.

God waits.

God’s initial (justified?) reaction is anger, but instead of simply reacting, God asks for advice and remembers the people (who God ultimately loves deeply).

We think of our own lives: This story has no hastily fired off email dripping with rage before the author could reconsider, no voicemail message left in anger before the speaker could calm their voice.

In the end, God is the picture of grace.

And, Moses?

Well, Moses is able to look at God and see all the appropriate ways to react.  But, when faced with the people’s disloyalty to him (and that must have been what Moses imagined as he walked down the mountain), Moses lets loose.  Moses is unable to control his own rage and, in fact, enacts his own destructive plot against the people.

Moses was a well-reasoned adviser, but a violently impulsive leader.

In our own lives, I am sure each of us can see ourselves reflected both in God and Moses’ reactions.  There are moments when we are able to give reasoned advice, only to turn around and act irrationally on our own accord.  And, there are moments when we may lose control initially and are able to reign in ourselves enough to react with calm.

What I love about this week’s portion is that it is understood that sometimes we may lose control.  We are human and we get angry.  We lose our cool.  We blow up.  This week’s Torah portion is a lesson in managing these very human and natural reactions.  This is the stuff of life.

Ultimately, we are, all at once, created in the image of God, students of Moses, and descendants of those who built the calf.

Parashat Tetzaveh and Purim--Costumes

In the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Tetzaveh, God says to Moses, “Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment. Next you shall instruct all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the gift of skill, to make Aaron's vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as priest” (Exodus 28:2-3).  While studying these verses with two TIOH fifth graders in preparation for their D’var Torah, I asked them the question, “What are vestments?”

One student quickly answered, “A disguise!”

I responded, “Ok, good.  And what’s another word for disguise?”

“A costume!” they replied emphatically.

The words “disguise” and “costume” were not the first words that come to my mind when considering priestly vestments.  But, these associative definitions have stuck in my mind the past few weeks and have been insistently whispering an important link between this Torah portion and the holiday of Purim, which begins Saturday night.

There is a clear link in the Torah between the decorations made for mishkan or the Tabernacle (meant to be the dwelling place for God), which were described in last week’s parashah, and the vestments made for the priests in this week’s portion.  Indeed, our Torah scrolls of today are dressed in much the same way as the ancient priests were, thereby connecting text to people to God.

And what if all of these vestments are simply disguises?  Costumes masking something underneath?  What, we might wonder, is being hidden?

Jewish mystics teach that the stories of the Torah are a disguise for the Torah’s deeper meanings, the Torah’s essential truths.  The stories, say the kabbalists, make Torah more accessible and comprehensible.  Might the same be true for the decorations we use to cover sacred space, holy people, and sacred text?  Might the costumes we drape upon them allow us to better access and understand their true power and connection to the divine?

We think now of ourselves.  Purim is upon us.  We are busy dusting off costumes and planning our own disguises.  The Purim masks we wear do not only draw attention to silly outer costumes, but also to what we are hiding underneath.  Might these costumes, in all their silliness, point to something much truer underneath?

The disguises we wear on Purim might be a far cry from the vestments of priests and Torah, not to mention the craftsmanship of the mishkan, but they make accessible the same inner truth:  Dwelling right beneath the surface of each one of us is a divine spark that animates our life.  Burning within each one of us is a soul that has the capacity for deep wells of compassion and kindness.  The costumes we wear on Purim can barely conceal our inner resources of healing and power, of grief and joy, of resilience and flexibility.  

Sometimes when we dress up something seemingly ordinary in something seemingly extraordinary, we are invited to see that thing differently.  To see it anew.  This is the fun and power for Purim.  Disguise yourself well.  And enjoy the costume.