Parsha Blog

This Shabbat we start reading the book of Numbers, in Hebrew, Bamidbar.  We also move immediately after Shabbat into celebrating the holiday of Shavuot, the celebration of receiving the Torah at Sinai.  While we’re excited to begin reading the next book of our Torah, we need to take a moment to notice the relationships between the book we are starting, the book we just finished, and the upcoming holiday.  They’re all connected with a message for today.

We’ve just concluded reading the book of Leviticus, named that way because it is mostly concerned with the laws of the Levites as they facilitate Jewish ritual.  It’s a book filled with rules and details that a Levite would need daily, and the rest of us…

We immediately begin reading the book of Numbers, which is misleading in its English name.  In Hebrew, the book is called Bamidbar, “In the Wilderness”.  It evokes images of grand expanses of desert, no reference points, quite literally shifting sands.  In other words, the Torah has juxtaposed two realities for us: the constrained rule of law, and the openness of a place without boundaries.  Within those two extremes, we are given the Torah, the holiday of Shavuot.

Judaism brings us two worlds that we walk in.  Certainly, there are commandments, rules, traditions, and rituals that create structure and security for us and for future generations.  At the same time, Judaism is a place of unlimited spiritual exploration and infinite expressions of thought and opinions.  These two realities live side by side as the books of Leviticus and Bamidbar sit side by side.  We need them both.

In today’s world, we can often feel the urge to seek black and white realities.  When things get confusing, it’s natural to want defined lines.  In recent years, we’ve seen communities gravitate to the far right, or the far left, looking for the set definitions that they feel can bring structure and security to the confusion they feel.   But Shavuot vividly reminds us that we accepted a Torah which brought us two realities to keep us moving between defined structures and spiritual freedom.  It’s part of why we celebrate.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

May we all enjoy celebrating the holiday of Shavuot in good health with our family and friends.

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach,

Rachael

This week’s Torah reading, Behar, discusses that once we enter Israel, the land itself will begin the same cycle we use: the 7th is a designation of rest and relief.  While we function on a cycle of 7 days, the land will function on a cycle of years.  Every 7th year is a Sabbatical – the land cannot be worked, it will revert to its natural state of unimpeded growth.  Everyone may enjoy its produce, including animals, landowners, and workers, but we may not infringe upon it.  We must remove our impact from the equation.

It’s amazing that within the years of Covid, we have witnessed a similar reality all around us.  When our doors first closed, we watched our backyards and noticed much more wildlife than had been there before.  We started to see small animals interacting with each other in ways that surprised us.  I remember sitting with my mother on her porch and we couldn’t hear each other talking because every time we began to speak, the birds began to chirp, and they outnumbered us by far.  Videos began to circulate from around the world showing how wild animals were strolling through metropolitan downtown streets.  It didn’t take long, and nature filled the gap we left when we simply remained in our homes.

In this case, the reason for our withdrawal was Covid, an illness that has cost us an enormous loss of life, illness, and pain for so many.  Yet, we couldn’t help but notice how nature around us filled some moments of isolation with a grand embrace of life emerging and displaying its grandeur.  A reminder that we are not the primal movers of the world around us, much as we often think we are.

We might sometimes hear the messages of the Torah as antiquated, but when the Torah commands a Sabbatical year for the land, we have all shared a historic moment today of understanding that message.  We are commanded to remove ourselves from our routines in order to allow nature to show us how we fit within a greater vision.  That message is powerful, even today

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,

Rachael

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This week’s Torah reading, parshat Emor, contains laws that govern a Kohen. We read that, with few exceptions, a Kohen cannot be in the same place with the body of someone who has died.  It means never attending the funeral of a friend.

The modern questions around this one detail would only amplify the problem.  If a Kohen cannot enter a cemetery, would that include being on a plane flying over a cemetery?  Is there a height at which we say the presence of the cemetery below is nullified?  What about being on a plane with the body of someone being transported to Israel?  Can a Kohen ever enter a hospital that has a morgue in the basement?  The more we think about it, the more expansive the problem.  Can a Kohen walk in New York city where the Twin Towers once stood – not an official cemetery but the ashes of many are buried in the ground there.

It is easy to see that even singular comments in the Torah can sometimes clash with the mundane lives we lead.  Throughout Jewish history, we have engaged in the process of finding ways to live with Jewish law and Torah.  Not because it’s convenient, but because the Torah itself commands us ‘vichai bahem’, ‘and you shall live by them’.  We are to find ways to bring them into our lives meaningfully. In fact, millennia of Jewish thought and texts are the product of our creative ways to not feel imprisoned by our commandments, but to thrive by living within their structures.

Kohanim cannot be present in the same place as the body of a deceased person.  We define ‘place’ as the common roof, not the individual rooms of a house.  We simultaneously recognize both our need to mourn, and that we live within Torah and Divine revelation.  Today, a Jewish funeral home will build a room with a separate roof so any Kohen can attend and honour someone who has passed away.  

As is our way, we always search for the place where Divine concepts and our human expressions stand together on common ground.

 I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,

Rachael

This week, we start the third book of the Torah, ‘Vayikra’ (Leviticus).  God calls (‘vayikra’) to Moses.  But this first word of the book has a scribal anomaly: the last letter, an aleph, is written smaller than the other letters.  

Interestingly, the last book of the Hebrew Bible, Chronicles, starts with an aleph for the word Adam, but the aleph at the beginning of that word is larger than the other letters.  Two alephs, one smaller and one larger.

We notice that Adam, the first human being, and Moses, our greatest Jewish leader, appear to be presenting us with opposite views.  The Midrash tells us that the aleph is smaller when God calls Moses because Moses is very modest and wants people to think that God happens to speak to him, not that God seeks him out.  If we remove the aleph in ‘vayikra’ it would mean ‘it just happened to be’.  Moses accepts his role as leader but is personally very modest and does not want the attention.

On the other hand, Adam, who represents all of humanity, has an enlarged aleph in his name to show a stronger, less humble, more confident presentation.  When it comes to humanity, there may be a greater calling.

We need both to complete a portrait of Jewish response.  In our personal lives, we are taught to be modest.  Jewishly, modesty doesn’t mean we think less of ourselves, it means we think of ourselves less often.  But when it comes to looking beyond ourselves, looking at others, entering the picture of peoplehood and humanity, we are to remember Adam and the larger aleph.  We are to find our confident, stronger voices and unite them to promote peace and protect the innocent.

The two books, Vayikra and Chronicles, remind us of both the power we have to restrain ourselves and the power we have to speak loudly and change the world.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,

Rachael

In this week’s Torah portion, Terumah, God teaches Israel how to create holy space. We’re taught how to build a Mishkan, a Tabernacle, a place for rituals. In these instructions are the details of the Menorah, the main light source, but the descriptive language is striking because it is describing a tree.
 
The Menorah is to have “branches,” “calyx,” “petals,” “stems” and “almond blossoms.” The wicks are to sit inside ‘almond blossoms’ and give light forward. In fact, much of the language used to describe the entire Mishkan is the language of nature and relationships. While most of the Mishkan objects are lost to us, the image of the Menorah has sustained into our world and into our homes.
 
But when we think of trees, we do not think of them as giving us light, we think of them as giving us oxygen. We have a physically symbiotic relationship with trees because we exhale carbon dioxide, which they absorb to form oxygen, which they release into the air that we then breathe. We inhale what they exhale, and they inhale what we exhale. We need each other to breathe.
 
Jewishly, when we think of light, we think of knowledge, the understanding of the word ‘enlighten.’ Light is also symbolic of our souls. We light candles in memory of others, and we light two Shabbat candles for the enhancement of our souls that we experience each Shabbat –the ‘twin’ soul we all welcome for the hours of Shabbat. Light, in Judaism, is strongly Kabbalistic, mysterious and symbolic of the infinite.
           
But the Torah has told us to create the Menorah, our source of light, and symbolically think of the trees. Is this not a mixed symbol?
           
Judaism always teaches that our bodies and our souls are equally holy, and we must treat them both with awe. The air we breathe sustains our bodies while the symbols of light, knowledge and spirituality sustain our souls. We must never think of ourselves as divided beings, but as holistic creations with Divine Intent.
           
The Menorah is perfectly described to us as the combination of air and light. Each time we saw it, we would remember our own holiness, and that every breath we take is an opportunity to bring more light to the world.          
    
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat­ – our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
 
Shabbat shalom,
Rachael