Parsha Blog

Same Old, Same Old? Hardly!

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week and a great end of Sukkot.

At this point in the Jewish calendar, we start reading the Torah from the beginning again.  The very first chapter of the very first book: Genesis. It is a milestone and we mark it by naming this Shabbat: Shabbat Bereishit.

We read the Torah over and over again, not because it’s ‘same old – same old’, but because we search for new perspectives on things we think we already know.  We are not seeking the information, so much as we are seeking the innovation.

And so…

I thought I might explore a few things we thought we knew and maybe a few new perspectives.

It seems pretty straightforward, in Genesis, that God created man and then took a rib out and created woman.  Understood that way, man is created in God’s image and woman is, quite literally, a side effect of the process.  At least, that’s what it says in the English.

In the Hebrew, the word we translate as ‘rib’ is not so straightforward.  There is a strong reading, in ancient Jewish texts, that translates the word as ‘side’.  Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai specifically describes the first human being as a two-sided, androgynous being – one side male and one side female.  According to him, they were joined back-to-back and could therefore never look at the same thing in the same way at the same time. If they communicated well with each other, they would create a totality of view, if not, they would argue about what each was seeing because, in fact, they were seeing different things.

According to this reading, God puts the human to sleep and removes one side (not one rib), thereby separating male and female so they can now face each other.  It creates a partnership between the genders and not a hierarchy.

Ah, the things we thought we knew.  No more movies named ‘Adam’s Rib’ (one of my favourites), no more references to ‘women are from Venus and men are from Mars’ (thank God no one came from Pluto – we know what happened to Pluto…). A new perspective on dialogues that are incomplete unless both voices are recognized and heard.

Yet, once the word translates into ‘rib’, Rabbi Shimon’s opinion retreats into the quiet background.

But Genesis does not only give us the beginnings of the world, it also gives us the beginnings of religious law.  The first ‘thou shalt’ (be fruitful and multiply) and the first ‘thou shalt not’ (don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge), followed by the first ‘don’t blame me’ human response.

Which brings us to the question of Judaism and the commandments.

There are 613 commandments in Judaism, with the full recognition that no one can possibly keep all 613 of them.  Interesting, although we understand no one can keep them all, we still judge each other and label entire communities based on the commandments they keep.  Somehow we have concluded an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ attitude toward the mitzvot, and we can’t agree on what constitutes a penny or a pound.

We expect that if a woman observes Shabbat, she shouldn’t be wearing pants.  If a man puts tefillin on in the morning, he should be wearing a kippah all day.  The list goes on and on (remember, 613 of these things). One of the judgmental statements I’ve heard people say about someone is that they pick and choose which commandments to keep.  It is never said in a positive way.

Yet, Judaism expects us to pick and choose.  Once we say we can’t do all of them, it now necessitates that we pick and choose.  The ‘Code of Jewish Law’, the book that lists all the mitzvot, is a mistranslation of the book’s actual name: Shulkhan Arukh’ – the Set Table.  A ‘code’ means you must adhere to everything, whereas a set table invites you to take a seat and fill your plate. Only you know what to put on your plate.  If you put too much, you will overeat and make yourself sick; if you put too little, you will walk away hungry. Every now and then you will be curious to taste something new and see how it feels.  Some people like to sit at the table and watch others enjoy, though they themselves choose not to eat. Judaism invites you to the table, assures you there is a seat ready for you with a set table of soulful delicacies – who could resist?

And so, we learn to pick and choose, we learn to grow and try more, or to leave something for now, knowing it is still there for later.  The difference is, we should pick and choose with pride!

Judaism never describes a hypocrite as someone who keeps one commandment but not another.  On the contrary, the Talmud repeatedly describes a hypocrite as someone who keeps many commandments with a false nature, or worse, for the purpose of misleading others.

According to Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, Heaven will judge those who wrap themselves entirely in their tallit.  The ones who use mitzvot to isolate themselves from the suffering of others, from the world around them. That is a Jewish hypocrite. 

Things we thought we knew…new perspectives on old information.  Can’t wait to start reading Genesis again!

To Yom Kippur…and Back

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah.  With that said, the High Holidays have begun and we are approaching Yom Kippur.

A non-Jewish friend of mine asked me recently why these holidays are called ‘High’.  I immediately flashed to the Hebrew name for these holidays: ‘Yamim Hanoraim’, the Terrible Days of Dread…I decided I couldn’t tell him that…

But it definitely got me thinking about how difficult it can be to actually celebrate these holidays, when they’re filled with prayers that include: ‘who by fire’ – followed by a long list of horrible fates.  Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and deprivation of the body, something Judaism tells us not to do too often. In fact, many people won’t wear leather because it’s so soft and comfortable and we want to deprive ourselves (more on that later, it’s actually not that simple).

So, I’ve decided that we need to recapture the celebration of these holidays, and maybe one of the best ways is to visit some of the lesser known stories of great Rabbis and Sages who struggled with some of these same questions.

One of my favourite stories is of the Chassidic Rebbes who spent so much time preparing for these holidays, that they isolated themselves from their students.  Of course, this would only make their students more curious about what they were doing and a few crafty ones would follow their Rebbes to see what they were doing.

In one story, the student discovers that the Rebbe is not teaching his students because he is dressing as a peasant and going to the cottage of a single old woman in the forest.  The Rebbe would speak to this non-Jewish woman in her native tongue (meaning not Yiddish) and would do chores around her cottage. The work included chopping wood and preparing meals as well as serving her the food.  She had no idea who he was and he never accepted payment. The student hid in the woods and saw his Rebbe do this day after day. After a week or so, the other students asked if anyone knew where the Rebbe was and what he was doing to prepare for the High Holidays.  One student said that the Rebbe is so holy, he must be going to heaven and back. The student who knew the truth of where the Rebbe was going finally broke his silence and spoke. He said that he has followed the Rebbe and he can confirm that the Rebbe is not going to heaven – he is ascending even higher.

In another story, a great Rabbi would shut himself away from his students for weeks before the High Holidays and study, frantically writing for days and days.  He’d stop in order to pray on Rosh Hashanah and then begin the same routine again until Yom Kippur. Every year the same thing happened. Finally, one trusted student asked him to please explain what was going on.  The Rabbi said that up to Rosh Hashanah, he is studying Torah and writing down the promises and agreements God has made with humanity and with particular people. On Rosh Hashanah, he would include his list in his prayers and read it over and over again to God.  After Rosh Hashanah he did the same thing, reflecting on his own personal promises and agreements from the last year and he would write them down. On Yom Kippur, he would read his list in his prayers over and over again to God. Toward the end of Yom Kippur, the Rabbi would hold both lists close to his heart and say: ‘this year we have both left things unfulfilled with much work to do.  I ask You for Your forgiveness and I give you mine.’

A few years ago, I came across the writings of a Rabbi in a displaced persons camp in Europe right after the Shoah.  It was Erev Yom Kippur and the Rabbi later writes that he looked at the crowd of people assembled to hear Kol Nidre. He writes of his moment of disbelief that so many Jews gathered for Yom Kippur, having just survived the horrors of the Nazi regime.  He looked at the crowd, and through tears, he pronounced they have nothing to beg forgiveness for, they are not to fast on this Yom Kippur, they have atoned enough.

And as we prepare ourselves to go to shul for the holiday, I’d like to share the thoughts of a Sage recorded in the Talmud.  In discussing their personal prayers, one Sage shared that he considers his clothing to be part of his personal prayer. Deciding what to wear to prayer, according to him, is a decision of self-expression, as are the words of his prayer and therefore it must be a deliberate choice of clothing.

Often times we angst over what to wear to shul based on very mundane and superficial reasons.  If I wore that dress last year, can I wear it again this year? (Interesting how we think people care or would even remember what we wore last year…isn’t ego a funny thing?)

And while we’re talking about what to wear, I’d like to revisit the prohibition on leather that many people observe.  One of the ideas about prayer that we learn, is that it is not appropriate to pray for things we ourselves are not willing to give.  In other words, praying to God for compassion would be ironic, if we ourselves do not act compassionately toward others. By extension, if on Yom Kippur we are praying to God for life, remembering that our clothing is part of our prayer, how ironic if we are clothed in the skin of an animal whose life we took only so we could be more comfortable.

While Yom Kippur can certainly be looked at as the Day of Dread, the decisions of fate and destiny that scare us, there is the other side to the holiday.  The stories of spirituality and compassion that connect one person to another; the nuances of accountability that connect us to God; the moment we elevate our wardrobe to an expression of the holy.

I love exploring all of that to the heights these concepts open.  I also think I need to prepare my husband for the hours to come, standing in front of my closet, while I ask over and over: “what to wear, what to wear?”

Standing Together

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Hi everyone

Hope the week was good.  My thoughts this week moved between the Torah portion and the upcoming High Holidays.  Then, I realized how much they speak to each other. This week’s parshah is Nitzavim and it starts with Moses as he declares to Israel: ‘Here you all stand’ – all of Israel standing before God, and I can’t help but think of the High Holidays.

Nitzavim – here we all stand.  We bring with us the truth of who we are, in all our strengths and our weaknesses.

Moses stands facing his imminent death and Israel stands looking at an unknown future – here we all stand.

Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of our Jewish new year, is not always remembered as our Day of Judgment.  However, another name for the holiday is: Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. God makes decisions about humanity that will then be sealed on Yom Kippur.  I find myself caught between the daunting aspects of the holiday and the celebration of sitting with my family.  

We stand together under the umbrella of Rosh Hashanah, with its major Divine decisions that sit above us, while we celebrate with each other down below.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have dipped a piece of apple in honey, only to have the apple slip from my fingers into the honey bowl. It’s not like I could ignore that I just dropped my apple into the communal honey, but digging my fingers into the honey to retrieve my apple will only make it worse. The truth is, I actually don’t like honey.  I love the concept of honey, the sweetness that comes as a result of the collective hive; the purity of it, the solid/liquid hybrid of it; the fact that it will inevitably end up in some little person’s hair… I love it all.  The only thing I don’t like is the taste.

So I celebrate that the holiday revolves around honey, because for me it represents the wonderful, funny, and symbolic things that are less than perfect.

I remember, as a little girl, anticipating hearing the shofar.  My teachers emphasized how important it is and my parents always made sure I came into the sanctuary especially to hear it.  I also remember hearing it and thinking a cow was baying at the moon. I didn’t find it a strange sound, strange would be an understatement.  I found it weird and jarring. The sound of a shofar is an acquired taste. But the more I acquire it, the more I love it.

The midrash tells us that the sound of the shofar is the matriarch, Sarah, crying and sobbing before God.  She believes her son has been killed and so she cries, and then she sobs and then she hyperventilates and then she screams the most gut wrenching and soul wringing scream imaginable and those are the sounds of the shofar.  They are strange, they are soulful and jarring and I love them.

The Rabbis also tell us that the physical sight of the shofar is our remembrance of the patriarch, Abraham.  He brought the vision of a partnership between God and humanity to the world. He contracted his relationship with God to create an eternal inheritance for the Jewish people – and it cost him everything.  He lost his wife, Sarah, and the relationship with his son, Isaac. His communication with God, toward the end of his life, is all but non-existent. What he gave the world is priceless, while the price he paid is unimaginable.  The bent and curved appearance of the shofar is the bent and curved back of Abraham as he bears the price he paid.

I celebrate that the shofar brings me to my ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, in their glory and their humanity.  I celebrate that they continue to lead us, through the shofar. It is magnificently strange and its sound is beautifully imperfect, as are we all.

Whether it is spelunking for my apple in the caverns of the honey bowl, or surrounding myself with everyone who makes the decision to go to shul, Rosh Hashanah will bring me to a moment of celebration.  Yet, with all that, the most powerful spiritual moment will lead me back to this week’s parshah, as I remember Moses’ declaration:

Here we stand.

May we all be inscribed for a year of life, health, peace and sweetness.

To Dream My Impossible Dream

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Hi everyone,

Hope everyone had a good week.

I had a week reflecting on fantasies and fairy tales.  I started watching a series about fantasy creatures and the dystopian world they are fighting to survive in.  I believe in fantasies and fairy tales.

To be clear, I don’t believe they’re real, I believe in them.  I believe we create them and then treat them as reality. That makes them very powerful.  I remember the perfect birthday present I ever received as a little girl was a toy spinning wheel.  It had red legs and a brown wheel. I got it as a present at my birthday party where I wore a beautiful dress with a crinoline underneath.  My party shoes were black and shiny with a bow and the dress had white beads on it. And though it is one of my best and favourite memories, I’m not sure if any of it is actually real (though my mother confirmed I once got a spinning wheel and seemed to love it – I think she said I slept with it). 

I love my fantasy moments because they are created by me, shaped by me and I can revisit them at will.  I revisit the first moments I met my newborn children. They were handed to me and birds were singing, the rainbow ended right above us and they smelled so beautifully like my husband and me.  Nothing else about the reality of the moment: the medical stuff, the staff rushing around, the lights, the beeping sounds, nothing about all of that enters my blissful fantasy moment.  

And, unfortunately, I can easily create my worst nightmare.  It will have no limits to the pain, the threat, the unending fear that only I would know how to create for myself, because only I know what will hurt me the most.  No theoretical hell to come could surpass what I could put myself through if I built my own personal one and no heaven afterlife could give me the joy of my fantasy moments.

I believe in fairy tales because I know we make them real.

But, they are the definitions of our personal extremes and deep down we know that both of these extremes could never happen.  We live our lives between our utopia and our dystopia. Jewishly, we know our minds can take us to our extremes and so the Torah and all of our texts always tell us: ‘choose joy’.  

This week’s parshah, Ki Tavo, paints a utopian image of the world if we follow covenant and build the society of values that Judaism outlines.  It is pure bliss, health, prosperity and affluence – we will want for nothing. Conversely, if we stray from covenant and betray the core of who we are, the picture of a cursed world that the parshah describes is bone-chilling.  Moses splits the people in two and while one half describes the horrific curses, the other half must answer ‘amen’ in agreement. Then we do it again with the blessings.  

Yet, the most surprising part of all of this is that both the rewards and punishments are described as implementing in this world.  In other words, if we do good, we are not rewarded with a blessed world to come, a wonderful afterlife. On the contrary, we are blessed with a world here that we would want to live in.  If we destroy everything we stand for, we are not punished with the eternal fires of hell – we are punished by having to live in the hell we created.  

The parshah outlines both a utopia and dystopia and neither one is real.  They are the extremes we have the power to create in our lives with the choices we make.

I used to be afraid of the pictures painted in this week’s parshah.  Would God really deliver the hell that is described? But then I realized we don’t need God to do it, we’ve done pretty good all by ourselves throughout history.  But equally powerful is the reality of the blessings we can create and the world it would bring.

God created the world we live in but we work with God to continue as partners.  We are instrumental in renewing creation every day that we live. We learned that in this week’s parshah, we heard it, we understand it and we answered amen.

Open Wounds

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Hi everyone,

Picture it:

A dead body found outside city limits with no witnesses and no one to blame.  It means no government is taking responsibility for the crime and no one is attending to the body.  No CSI team is sent and no police tape will cordon off the crime scene. In a very short time, the animals will claim the area and the victim will be forgotten forever.  A crime with a suffering victim and no closure in sight.

And now you have the picture painted in part of this week’s parshah, Shoftim.

Ok, I’m being a bit Hollywood dramatic, but only a bit.  The problem mentioned in the Torah is, in fact, a dead body between cities and no one owning the problem.  But whenever there is suffering involved, the Torah has made it clear that it cannot go unanswered – it must come to a close.

And so we arrive at discussing closure in our lives.  It’s nice when things tie into neat parcels with beginnings and endings.  Whenever something new occurs in our lives, we say a ‘shehecheyanu’, the blessing that acknowledges our gratitude for arriving at that new moment.  But, we don’t say ‘shehecheyanu’ for new things that don’t have endings. For instance, we don’t say a ‘shehecheyanu’ when we get married or at our first intimacies because we intend those relationships to last unendingly.  The blessing is for those moments that have closure: like the beginning of a holiday that will end in a week.

And though we know some things end, that doesn’t mean we’ll find closure.  Closure involves picking up the loose thread and tying it to something.  

But it’s not that simple, because if the loose thread involved our getting hurt, then we might revert to that primal element within ourselves that wants the person who hurt us to be hurt back. 

I saw this play out years ago when I was waiting for a flight at the airport.  I watched two kids playing at the gate. They were clearly brother and sister, around 6 or 7 years old.  The longer we waited, the less they got along (shocker). After about an hour, their now aggressive playing ended with the little boy crying and running to his mother.  Through his tears he told his mother that his sister hit him. “So now I have to hit her back, right? And I have to hit her HARDER, right?”

His words were brilliant.  Of course, she should feel what he felt, so he should hit her back.  But isn’t there a price to be paid for initiating the violence, and shouldn’t there be a deterrent built in to prevent future preemptive hitting – so he should hit her harder.  

His point was driven home to his mother when she told him she would talk to his sister about it immediately.  His response: “TALK to her??? Aren’t you going to YELL at her?!?!”

And there it is: the moment we confuse closure with justice.

And now it’s helpful to go back to that dead body in the Torah.  There will be no justice because there are no witnesses and no possible way to solve the crime.  But having no justice does not mean we cannot have closure. The Torah instructs the two closest cities to measure their distance to the body and the closest one assumes jurisdiction.  Then there is a ceremony performed to symbolically punish the guilty party and bury the dead. It is symbolic justice but effective closure.

But not everything can tie up so meaningfully.  Most of our moments are complex relationships with other people involved.  We feel the loose thread of conversations we didn’t have or injustices that were left unaddressed.  How can we find closure when the other person doesn’t know how wrong they were? If they only realized we were right, then we could finally close the matter.  And, again, we confuse closure with our fantasy of justice and so we go round and round.

How to break the cycle?

I think about the Torah’s statement of symbolic closure.  Once we realize we are not the ultimate Judge and therefore justice alludes us, we can begin to entertain symbolic closures.  There’s a great Yiddish saying that translates as: ‘not everything I think needs to be said; not everything I say needs to be written; not everything I write needs to be sent’.  There are stages of expression and I can choose one for closure.  

So, maybe we go somewhere private and say what needs saying, or maybe we write a letter and destroy it when we’re done.  Closure means we acknowledged our ‘jurisdiction’ and finish the loose thread.  

So…picture it:

A dead body found outside city limits with no witnesses and no one to blame but no longer a hanging thread and now it’s a model for the unfinished moments we all carry.

Learning To Listen

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Hope everyone had a great week.  

My brother recently celebrated a birthday which got me thinking about my siblings.  I remember a moment with my brother from our childhood. I was sitting in our kitchen with my father when my brother shouted down from his room: “Hey Rach, grab me some water!”

I was very touched that my older brother would ask me to do something for him, since our relationship to this point mostly consisted of jabbing each other with our elbows at dinner because I’m a righty and he’s a lefty.  The jabbing was obviously deliberate.

So, in my innocence, I thought he was reaching out to me as someone he could rely on for water…silly me.

For anyone who doesn’t remember kitchen sinks from the 1970s, next to every faucet was a spray nozzle that would shoot a strong spray of water directly forward when the handle was squeezed.  Unbeknownst to me, my brother had wrapped an elastic band around the handle so it was depressed and ready to shoot water at whomever turned on the faucet. My brother had moments of evil genius!

But God had a different plan for him.  After he shouted to me asking for water, I immediately said ‘of course’, feeling all grown up and worthy of taking my rightful place as someone he could rely on.  But then my father told me it’s ok, he would pour the water. I watched as my father turned on the faucet. I watched as a shower of water shot out and drenched him completely and I watched it go on and on for what seemed an eternity until my father figured out what was happening and shut the water off.  

That wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard my father yell, but it was the first time I’d heard him yell a curse word over and over…it was the ‘s’ word.

My brother ran into the kitchen, saw our drenched father and went a sickly colour of grey.  Then he kept yelling at me: “I thought YOU were getting me water!!!” I just sat at the table listening to all the yelling and trying to figure out what I had done, since I actually hadn’t done anything.  

My brother and I grew very close over the years and this is one of the memories that we cherish. 

Why do I remember this incident now?  Because this week’s parshah, Vaetchanan, has the verses that contain the prayer ‘Shema’.  It is our proclamation of monotheism and it translates as: “Hear, Israel, my Master, our God, my Master is One.”  We recite it in prayer and we recite it when we go to sleep. We learn to say it out loud and tradition says to cover our eyes when we say it so our ears will hone in.

But it is not a prayer that we direct to God, it is a prayer that we direct to each other.  In fact, we clearly state ‘hear ISRAEL’, and we cover our eyes so we will, in fact, hear ourselves and each other.  It is a moment of unity and commonality that we express to each other and it stands in opposition to any of our divisive moments.  We argue over everything, as siblings do, we compete over attention and justifications, as siblings do, and we tease each other and play pranks, as siblings do, but at the end of the day we unite and affirm our loyalties and our allegiances.

When my kids were little and I would put them to bed, I often stood outside their rooms to hear if they were falling asleep.  Many times I heard them whispering to each other and I would catch the words ‘mama’ or ‘papa’. They were clearly sharing their confusion, angst and frustration about their parents, or perhaps plotting pranks of their own.

Whenever they would get me with a good one, I would wonder if that had been planned in one of their late night secret meetings.  I loved that they shared this with each other because who could better understand it all than a sibling?

Moses has outlived his siblings at this point in the Torah.  He did not have sibling moments and he did not have strong family connections.  The parshah begins with the word ‘vaetchanan’, which means ‘and I pleaded.’ Moses is referring to how he begged that God allow him to enter Israel but God refused.  In fact, God told him not to speak of it anymore, never to ask again. Moses has been told he should no longer pray to God on this matter. Our hearts should break at that moment for the complete ear-shattering silence that God is demanding.  Especially because Moses is the one teaching us to say ‘Shema’: ‘Listen’.

So when we say the Shema, perhaps at that moment we are honouring Moses by acknowledging how well he taught us to hear each other.  Perhaps God told Moses to stop pleading because maybe the moment was difficult for both Moses and God. Maybe to protect Israel and answer its needs, Moses and God endured the difficulty.  If so, our personal moment of Shema is more loaded than we ever knew.

Moses stands alone as the sole survivor of his family.  His parents are long gone and his siblings have all died.  Nature prepares us for the loss of parents but a sibling is a lateral companion, they are meant to stand with us from cradle to grave.

Back in the book of Genesis, when the Torah begins, we meet the first siblings: Cain and Abel.  It ends horribly as Cain kills Abel over the perceived love of God, the Parent. When God questions Cain about it,  Cain asks God a fundamental human question: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper’ and his question is left unanswered in the Torah.  

Ultimately, in this week’s parshah, in the last book of Torah, we learn to say Shema to each other.  We learn to listen to each other, for that brief moment, and to finally understand that God is the Parent, we are all siblings and we can finally answer Cain’s question by saying ‘yes.’

Fear of ‘The Button’

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Hope everyone had a great week.


I had an interesting moment this week. I realized that I am afraid of computers.  Actually, to be honest, I’m afraid there’s a hidden ‘delete’ button somewhere that will activate when I am trying to do something else.  Some kind of ‘control’, then press the ‘capital R’- spell my name – button that will erase everything I’ve been working on. I do not come by this fear lightly.  

Years ago, I was working in a Jewish organization where 30 people were sitting in cubicles in one big room.  It was my first day and I was setting up my work space (I like to personalize things and I get very sensitive to the objects in my surroundings).  I noticed that when I pulled my chair closer to the keyboard, my foot banged on the computer box under my desk. I crawled under the desk to move the box closer to the wall and give myself more leg room.  As I was moving the computer, a cable from the computer loosened – which I only realized when I heard that terrible noise of a droning hum powering down and then silence. The silence lasted a few seconds and then the whole room exploded as 30 people shouted: ‘WHAT HAPPENED?!?’  

Luckily, I was still under my desk because people started moving quickly from computer to computer to see if everyone had lost power, and subsequently, all the documents they’d been working on.  All 30 computers were dead.

My supervisor came into the room and saw me under my desk.  She asked what I was doing and I explained that my knees needed more space.  By this time I was standing up and I noticed the chaos in the room. People were scrambling and my supervisor asked about another worker and was told she went for a walk to calm down.  I found out later, she had been working on a grant proposal online for 3 days and if she logged off, the site kicked her off without saving any of her work.

I also subsequently found out that all the computers on the floor were plugged into my computer, to save money on wiring each of them independently.  Yes, it was a fire hazard. Yes, it was ignored until that moment. A hidden positive: now it would be fixed. However, it made no difference to me. I still owned that terrible moment.  As I revisit this now, I can still taste the adrenaline.

So I am left with a fear of the hidden ‘button’ on a computer.  I have concluded that I am not a technology person. I know it is an emotional conclusion and not a rational one, but it makes no difference.  The conclusion about myself limits me, scares me and creates false boundaries. But I am in good company…Moses did that too.

When Moses meets God, at the Burning Bush, God tells Moses to go speak to Pharaoh and Moses replies by saying: ‘I am not a man of words’, he is not an ‘ish devarim’.  The word ‘devarim’ means ‘words’ or ‘things’ or even ‘stuff’.  We don’t know why Moses thinks of himself that way, but it proves to be an incredible limiting factor for him.

When he went out of the palace and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, Moses strikes and kills him.  A man of words might have commanded him to stop, especially considering Moses is part of the royal family.  But because he does not see himself that way, he does not behave that way.

Later, Moses will climb Mt. Sinai to get the Torah.  He brings down what will be known as the Ten Commandments.  But in Hebrew, we call them the Ten Utterances (Aseret haDibrot), a form of the word ‘devarim’.  The Ten Statements, ten of the things Moses said he couldn’t do.  The man who is not a man of words will bring ten statements to the world that will change humanity forever.

And he still doesn’t see it.

Ultimately, Moses will stand in front of a rock that God commanded him to speak to, but he will hit it. He is still in Egypt in his mind, he is still facing the Egyptian bully.  He refuses to accept that he has become a ‘man of words’ and so he cannot speak to the rock, he must hit it. Egypt must never enter Israel and so Moses will die in the desert.

Before he dies, Moses recites an entire book of the Torah: Devarim.  We begin to read it this week. We call this book Deuteronomy, which in Greek means ‘Second Law’, because the Ten Commandments are recited again in this book.  But in Hebrew it’s called Devarim, meaning ‘words’, or ‘the things in his head that will now gain expression’. Everything in this book speaks of Moses’ perspective and his processing of events.  They are his memories and his fears and the book ends with a beautiful song he has composed.

The Midrash asks why this book is included in our Torah if it is the product of Moses, rather than dictated by God.  The Sages respond that this book is offered by Moses as a prayer and God accepts it and answers: ‘Amen’.

In his last moments, Moses understands that his life had defined around a limitation he imposed and could not exceed.  We all do the same thing to ourselves repeatedly and pray to find those moments of realization.

So, I decided that maybe I’ve been unfair to myself.  Maybe I could be a technology person. I experimented with something safe…the TV remote control.  I noticed my husband was watching tv, but then I noticed that although he was holding the remote control, there was a second remote in the other room.  I picked up the second remote, quietly stood outside the room where my husband was and pressed the volume button until the sound muted. I watched his confusion as he reached for the remote next to him and increased the volume.  I then decided to change the channel. His face was priceless as he went into the settings menu to try and figure out what was going on. I had never felt such power – this moment was magical (any married person knows what I mean).

By the fourth time, my husband discovered what I was doing because I was laughing too hard to keep quiet.  I had crossed the threshold and saw the joy technology could bring to my life.

I still cringe when I remember that moment under my desk from years ago.  I still have a moment of hesitation about hidden buttons on the computer, but I also accept that I am a person who can ultimately pull the plug and liberate myself.

The Oy of Peoplehood

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Hope everyone had a great week.


This week’s parshah, Matot-Masei, might as well be titled: ‘oy’. It talks a lot about war and
booty and prisoners and revenge. All I can say is to remember we are never commanded to do
that, we are reading about warfare in the ancient world – it’s a slice of hell.
But there’s a defining moment in there that talks about two tribes telling Moses they prefer to
live outside of Israel and not set up their homes within the borders of the land.
Every time I read this section, I am taken with the fact that from the moment we had a nation
of Jews enter the land of Israel, we had a group within the nation saying that life in Israel is not
for them. In other words, there are no Israeli Jews without simultaneously having Diaspora
Jews.


And now I arrive at today.


I am the generation born into a world where there is a modern state of Israel. I can’t imagine a
world without Israel, though my parents lived in a world that produced the Holocaust so that
answers that question.


But I struggle with the relationship Jews in Israel have with Jews outside of Israel and visa versa.
I’m not sure we’ve figured out how to do ‘peoplehood’. Our realities are so vastly different and
while we share Jewish history and culture, those of us outside of Israel have mastered living in a
different culture as we layer our identities. Where can we connect?


A few weeks ago, I visited Israel. There were days I struggled with what I saw and there were
days of such connection words fail. At one point, while talking with an Israeli about Judaism,
they listened to my views and then said, ‘so you’re a Reformit.’ I was a bit confused and
explained that I am not a Reform Jew as some of my Jewish choices wouldn’t fit that
community. They explained that I seem liberal, but I also keep commandments, so I have to be
‘a Reformit.’ I could see there were no other categories of Judaism possible in this discussion,
so I said nothing.


By the way, this week’s parshah clearly states what the Talmud later repeats as a Jewish
precept: silence is agreement. I said nothing and therefore chose to agree with him at that
moment. You choose your battles.


My thoughts go back years ago to when I was saying Kaddish for my father. I was also leading a
trip to Israel at that time and was strategically finding a minyan every morning so I could say
Kaddish. We were in Tel Aviv for a few days and I found a minyan in a small shul on a main street not far from my hotel. It was a group of men on their way to work stopping in quickly to
pray. It was ten men with no rabbi or chazan leading them.


The first day I walked in, I went to the women’s section which was on the same floor as the
men, a pretty flimsy mechitzah that allowed us to see each other and hear each other. They
definitely knew I was there because I had to climb over all the stalked chairs, tables and books
filling the women’s section. Actually, I was happy to find a place where I could sit alone with
my thoughts, so I didn’t mind the clutter.


One morning I was delayed and ended up running to get to the minyan in time. As I ran in, the
men were already finished and were putting away their Tefillin, ready to go to work. I
remember standing there and saying: ‘you’re finished??’, in English and then starting to cry.
These were not quiet, subtle tears. I mean sudden, anguished sobs. It was the first time I had
missed Kaddish all year and I didn’t expect the pain I was feeling. The men stopped and one
man asked me what happened. I told them I was saying Kaddish for my father but now I missed
it.


In Hebrew, I heard some of them ask each other why I’m saying Kaddish, don’t I have brothers.
One man quietly asked if it was allowed. Only one man asked the group who I am. All of these
comments were happening at once as these men are standing there, late for work, watching a
strange foreign woman crying.


The man who first spoke to me said to the group, ‘she’s saying kaddish. She needs a minyan, so
no one is going anywhere.’ Before I knew it, they all put down their Tefillin, stood around me in
a circle while one of them handed me a Siddur and said ‘Read!’ The page was already opened
to Kaddish and I quietly recited it as they all answered me.
That was peoplehood.


I have no doubt that most of them walked away confused by what I was doing. I’m also pretty
sure some of them agreed to be there so I would stop crying. The reasons don’t matter, we
created holiness together and fulfilled an ancient intent of unity.
O this week’s Parsha, when the tribe of Reuben tells Moses they don’t want to settle in Israel,
Moses argues. Actually, Moses threatens them. They stood their ground and the two sides
worked out a mutually agreeable arrangement. It strained the relationship of peoplehood then
and by the end of the book of Joshua it almost causes a civil war. The challenge of
understanding our peoplehood remains with us today and we inherit the challenge honestly.


A few weeks ago, when I was in Israel, I argued with some people I met and after I left, I missed
it. Like any family visit.

Numbers in all the Wrong Places

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Hope everyone had a great week.  

The parshah this week is Pinchas and it has some wonderfully powerful points.  We meet five sisters who challenge Moses and God on the laws of inheritance and end up carrying the day, changing the laws forever.  We see God’s reaction to a High Priest who kills a man and woman for worshipping God through their sexuality. All great stuffy, but I don’t want to talk about those.

I want to talk about the stuff in the parshah that makes us yawn and ends with raising an eyebrow at a spiritually eternal and Divine document that seems to love numbers the way the Torah does. 

In this parshah, God tells Moses to take a census of Israel in order to form an army.  Each tribe will now be listed with its original founder and every male descendant and their male descendants, and so on and so on.  In total, over 600,000, which sounds like a lot of people but it’s actually a pretty small army. In other words, every victory Israel has will never be because they outnumber the enemy. I understand the need for the final figure,  but I really don’t need the initial numbers and then every number in between…

…or do I?

To most of us, me included, numbers need to be meaningful, they need to speak to me in a plain and direct way that allows me to use them as I need.  I don’t love numbers for their own sake. My accountant loves numbers for their own sake and whenever we meet, my eyes glaze over within minutes. When he pauses, I assume he asked a question and I usually nod.  He knows me well enough that at that point he picks up my phone and turns on the recorder and explains the numbers into the phone. I will listen in bits and pieces later. God bless my accountant.

So, I need meaningful numbers.  I learned an invaluable lesson about meaningful numbers when I was a student teacher.  I was placed in an elementary school in a violent section of the city. It was filled with gangs and drugs and we were cautioned to visually check our students every morning without being obvious.  We were looking for cuts, bruises, physical abuse. Every absence was to be noted.

I was assigned to teach the class fractions.  As a student teacher, I did the classic ‘draw a pie on the board, divide it in half, divide it in quarters’ and so on.  The class was quiet as I went my merry way with my apple pie drawing. Every time I turned to look at the students, they sat quietly staring back.  I felt like I was fractions’ gift to education (yeah, ego can convince us of that in a fraction of a second…) I got all the way to one-eighths without a peep from them.  Something wasn’t right. I asked if they had questions and one brave soul put up his hand and said: ‘I’ve never had pie, do you know how to draw a pizza?’

Meaningless numbers, they’ll get us every time.

So why is the Torah insisting on the numerical details?

The numbers are important when we plug in the age-old resolution: ‘cherchez la femme’, ‘look for the woman’.   In other words, behind every mystery will stand some woman, or some issue that leads to a woman, or some man who is searching for a woman – basically, everything sources to a woman.

The Torah leaves a huge issue unresolved and that is the double matriarchy of Leah and Rachel.  Jacob only wanted Rachel but also married Leah. Leah is fertile while Rachel is loved. We have the unresolved dichotomy of a woman: is she mother (Leah) or lover (Rachel)? 

Since the Torah won’t resolve it, tradition tries to figure it out by looking at who the next leader will be.  Clearly, the model for a woman would be the one who birthed the heir. Not so fast, Leah gave birth to Judah who will give us the great king, David.  But Rachel gave birth to Joseph who was a leader in Egypt. David was a warrior king while Joseph was the great negotiator. WHICH IS OUR MODEL?!

As if that weren’t complicated enough, there is a tradition of the Messiah ben David (son of David) and also a tradition of the Messiah ben Yosef (son of Joseph).

So far, no clear answer, so as a woman, I have ambiguity of role model.  Am I to be mother or am I to be lover?

Here’s where all the numbers from the parshah come in.  Maybe the biggest tribe will be the leader and then I can resolve who is the matriarch?  Except, when you look at the census in this parshah, you see the Judah and the Joseph tribes are coming in very close in numbers.

I can’t resolve the issue.  

I believe that things in the Torah are deliberate and therefore if I can’t resolve the issue it’s because I shouldn’t resolve it.  I am to cherish both Leah and Rachel. I am to be an integrated woman balancing between ‘mother’ and ‘lover’.

In the end, the ‘eyes glaze over’ numbers in the parshah told me how Israel built its first army in the ancient world while simultaneously showing me how I find my identity in the modern world.

Now I wouldn’t give those numbers up for anything.

Everything Is Fine Until the Animals Talk Back

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Hope everyone had a great week.  I heard some wonderful stories this week I’d like to share, especially because they tease out a beautiful message in this week’s parshah. 

One of my sons was on vacation and met an iguana that was hanging around his room.  He told me how he planned to have the iguana eat out of his hand by the end of the two weeks.  He explained to me that iguana’s display certain behaviours when they feel threatened or cornered.  He detailed the behaviours he was watching for.  I realized my son speaks ‘iguana’ and wondered whose genes he inherited. 

He planned where and how he would meet and greet the iguana everyday and how he would advance his plan to interact.  His wife showed me a video on her phone of their last day on vacation as the iguana came to my son and ate from his hand.

I am in awe. 

Please understand, I have no desire to communicate with an iguana. Reptiles make me nervous.  I take no comfort when I’m told they’re more afraid of me than I am of them because that just means now they feel trapped and I’m the bigger threat. I am more the school of thought that says ‘as long as we don’t see each other we won’t scare the living daylights out of each other’ – fair is fair – and most reptiles smell my philosophy all over me and thankfully leave me alone.

But I was still in awe.

And as wonderful as the iguana story is, because it’s so unusual, the second story is also great for the opposite reason, it is so common.  It involves a clown fish and her clown fish mate.  My only exposure to clown fish is from the movie Finding Nemo and it definitely doesn’t do them justice.  Ms. CLOWN FISH (and I deliberately capitalize that), dominates Mr. clown fish in every way.  He eats and sleeps when she gives him permission and in return, she protects him – she is larger and basically organizes and rules his life.  She is Clown Fish Queen!

I was told that when these fish first meet, the female will bump the male with her nose, and he must then vibrate in response.  Apparently, she is asking if he accepts her as dominant and she demands he vibrate to indicate yes.  If he does not vibrate, she kills him.  Interesting system.

Why am I sharing these obscure stories?  Because they speak directly to this week’s parshah of the foreign prophet and the talking donkey.  This week’s parshah is Balak and in the parshah, Balak, the King of Moab, hires Balaam, a foreign prophet, to curse Israel.  Much as he tries, Balaam cannot curse us because God has made it clear to him that we are blessed.  He tries repeatedly and fails each time.

In fact, in one attempt, his donkey refuses to walk because she sees an angel blocking her way with an outstretched sword.  Balaam doesn’t see the angel.  After beating her, the donkey speaks to Balaam and explains about the angel and only then is he able to see it.  Yes, this is in the Torah.

I am fascinated with how animals play into the lives of foreign prophets or prophets headed to foreign lands.  Balaam and his donkey are the most obvious example but when the prophet Jonah tries to avoid delivering a prophecy to a foreign land, a whale swallows him, shelters him and ultimately delivers him where he needs to be.

These instances of extraordinary natural interactions are only a few indications of what the Sages tell us about the vision of creation.  According to the midrash, all of creation shares a common language but most of humanity has forgotten it.  The water in the clouds and the water in the earth speak and coordinate how to feed the grass and trees. The rain will limit itself to only penetrate so deep since the waters in the earth will only rise so far.  That way, little roots are fed and giant roots are fed in perfect balance. 

Unfortunately, the Sages believe we have made ourselves deaf to this language and over time, we have stopped hearing it.  There is a midrash that describes how we cut fruit bearing trees because we no longer hear them cry for the loss of their fruit, their children, but apparently their cries fill the world. 

In its original vision, we believe creation embodies unimaginable diversity of species who all connect, communicate and collaborate toward balance.  Yet so much of that has gone astray and it becomes so disheartening but then I think of my son and the iguana and the language of the clown fishes and the angel and the donkey. 

In fact, it is Balaam, the foreign ill-intentioned prophet, who ultimately blesses Israel and says, “Ma Tovu” – How good are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel.  Every siddur begins with these words and tradition says we should speak them as we enter any shul.  But we’ve taken that even further.  Jewish gatherings and summer bonfires are filled with people swaying, arms on each other’s shoulders, singing Ma Tovu.  Kids are taught to sing it in rounds, and we take it as a moment of unity and harmony.

The Torah teaches us that God speaks with everyone and the Sages remind us that the wise one is the one who learns from every person.  As summer surrounds us and we are filled with the sounds of nature everywhere, what a beautiful message this week to take even a few seconds and listen to the sounds around us and remind ourselves that it is, in fact, a language.          

How beautiful and humbling are the words of a foreign prophet.