This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, tells of Jacob wrestling with an angel, and receiving the name ‘Israel’. The image of a person and an angel entangled with each other is both beautiful and empowering – and then the angel hits below the belt. Needing to release himself, the angel targets Jacob’s thigh, injuring his sciatic nerve. Jacob will bear the injury and the pain of it for the rest of his life.
Two opposite events are occurring simultaneously that night. Jacob is being blessed with the name ‘Israel’, while at the same time he is being physically injured. The blessing will grow through time, as his descendants learn of its meaning, but the injury will also grow, as Jacob ages and the pain progresses. The positive and the negative are sitting side by side.
The Torah tells us of both events, and then tells us to remember them both in who we are and in what we do. Jacob’s descendants are the Israelites, and today, all Jews know we are the nation, Israel. At the same time, the Torah tells us we must refrain from eating any meat from the back half of an animal that might contain the relevant nerve. It is not the meat that isn’t permitted, it’s the nerve. The Torah has told us that as we bear the name of the blessing that was bestowed, we must always remember the injury of that night.
Judaism sits in the covenant with God, but a blessing is not the same thing as protection. As Jacob is blessed, he is injured, and the Torah tells us to remember the injury.
All this happens on the night before Jacob is to reunite with his brother, Esau, his twin who has sworn to kill him. Jacob has prepared his camp for war, even as he is soliciting for peace. We are taught to cherish the blessings of Israel, while we simultaneously understand that danger and injuries are still part of this world, and we take steps accordingly.
The power of Jacob’s encounter with the angel is the choice of perspective we see. Two things happened that night, and although Jacob will live with the physical pain of his injury, we never hear of it again. He has focused on the blessing of becoming Israel, and that is the lesson he teaches us most clearly.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
This week’s Torah reading, Vayetzei, contains Jacob’s dream of a ladder to the sky with angels ascending and descending. Jacob is fleeing from his brother, Esau, and must leave his home for the first time. God pronounces covenant to Jacob, and promises him the land of Israel, and the wealth of descendants. God also pledges to accompany Jacob wherever he goes, and return him to his homeland. It’s a beautiful and reassuring moment.
However, when Jacob wakes up and revisits his dream, he strikes a different agreement with God. Jacob pledges that if God stays with him, keeps him safe, gives him food and clothing while he’s away, as well as returns him safely to his father’s house, only then will Jacob make God his God. Jacob has turned the covenantal promise into a conditional one. This is the instance when we watch covenant become a partnership of pledge. It is Jacob who sets out the details of a human response.
We live our Judaism within the frame of our history and our ancestral visions. But within that is the empowerment of each person to expand and define. Our prayers include Jacob’s innovations, as we always include prayers for safety, peace, protection and sustenance. Yet we also know that personal prayers are defined by each person. Our Sages taught us that our formal prayers must always be accompanied by our personal ones.
Jacob was leaving his home in fear of his life. God assuring him of spiritual companionship and future descendants did not speak to his human moment. The visions of our ancestors changed the world, but they each began with a personal yearning they put into words.
At times, formal prayer can feel distant and opaque – those are the times to remember Jacob, his dream and his pledge. Jewish prayer is an open door to cross and find the comfort of words Jews have said for millenia, or to find the truth of the moment and express only that to God.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
This Shabbat we read parshat Toldot, and the story of Jacob and his twin brother, Esau. It is also the Shabbat before Remembrance Day, November 11, as we remember our Canadian soldiers and veterans. It’s interesting that these two things speak to each other with relevance for today.
The story of Jacob and Esau resonates as the story of two brothers in conflict. Jacob trades the stew he has made for Esau’s blessing as the eldest son. Esau feels betrayed when he later realizes he will not receive that blessing. Jacob flees from his brother, Esau, who has pledged to kill him.
From Jacob’s point of view, the blessing was obtained fairly and legally. From Esau’s point of view, it was a fleeting momentary decision, and doesn’t speak to the emotional reality of losing his father’s blessing. Jacob sees the covenant while Esau sees his father’s love. Both brothers sit in a single event with conflicting perspectives that cannot be reconciled. It is the story of every human conflict —it is headed for war.
As we cross time from the ancient world to today, we often sit in this reality. We struggle with warfare, aiming for peace which is often elusive. Remembrance Day is a time for us to honour those people who risk everything to bring peace. The Torah teaches us that peace is not a natural state, it is something to be solicited, pursued, negotiated, and fought for. On Remembrance Day we remember the values for which someone would risk everything. We honour the people as well as their vision.
Jacob will eventually solicit Esau for peace. In doing so, he will offer back the riches he has obtained, and Esau will refuse them. The brothers are able to close the pain of the past and consider the hope of a future.
On Remembrance Day, we remember our soldiers, veterans, and heroes. We remember the pain of their loss, as we affirm knowing that everything they did, and everything they risk, is to consider a hope for our future.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
This week, in parshat Chayei Sarah, the Torah tells us of Sarah’s passing. Yet, when it speaks of the life of Sarah, our first matriarch, it begins with a strange phrase: “These were the lives of Sarah”. We are struck by the plural forms. In fact, the name of the parshah, Chayei Sarah, translates as ‘the lives of Sarah’.
Many of our commentaries offer beautiful insights into the choice of the plural. One midrash offers the idea that all lives are connected through time, and therefore, every life is, in fact, a plural life. It explains that when the book of Ecclesiastes said: “The sun rises and the sun sets”, the sun is understood as representing the brightness and warmth each of us brings to the world. We’re told that before the sun sets – before we lose someone, it first rises -a new person has entered the world. The midrash points out that the Torah already told us that Rebecca, our next matriarch, was born, before it told us of the loss of Sarah.
Rebecca is not the replacement of Sarah since people are not replaceable one with another. The insight is for us to know that the world of relationships we build is limitless, as our relationships with others never end but build on each other. Our lives connect with others, and when someone is lost to us, we may consider that, in time, some of the values they embodied may be found to shine in other people.
One opinion states that we all live many lives in our lifetime –that is why we find the plural noun here. Sarah lived one lifetime but led many lives within that time. During those lives, she influenced others and left an impression that stays with them. Sarah continues to live her many lives even today.
The eternal flow of sunrises and sunsets, as seen in the lives we live and the lives we touch, lets us know that the uniqueness of each person extends beyond anything we could contain in the singular –we need the plural.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
This week’s parshah, Vayera, contains powerful concepts, not just for the ancient world but for our modern one. We hear of strangers visiting Abraham and Sarah, and we suspect they’re angels. Today, we often encounter people and are left with the impression they are more than they appear. We glimpse the infinite depth that lies within each person. Later in the parshah, Abraham argues with God about Sodom and creates a new moral dialogue. His argument sets our understanding of how righteousness must be weighed and valued more than is evil – 10 righteous people can carry a region of thousands. God agrees. We also read of a desperate moment with Lot and his daughters that begins the lineage that will give us the Messiah. We remember that sometimes the darkness of the moment can blind us to the redemption of the next moment.
Yet, with all these tremendous perspectives, we usually focus on one element of the parshah, the binding of Isaac. It is one of the most challenging and difficult texts we read, and we have yet to explain it in a way that sits comfortably in our hearts. But because it disturbs us, we focus there and don’t value the positive messages in the rest of the parshah.
Sometimes in our daily lives, we experience things the same way we read this parshah. Each day is filled with beautiful and powerful nuanced moments that positively impact how we think and feel, yet we will focus on something that disturbed us.
We protect ourselves by seeing what is negative, but we also deprive ourselves of seeing the positive growth in each day. This week’s parshah invites us to broaden our views, seek the positive moments and value the change in perspectives they bring.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
This week, we meet Judaism’s visionaries: Abraham and Sarah. God reaches out with an invitation to take a journey: lech lecha. It’s a Hebrew phrase that is often difficult to translate. The first word, lech, is the command ‘go’, which we immediately recognize. However, the second word, lecha, is out of place in this phrase. Lecha means ‘for you’, which has generated many commentaries on how this journey will benefit them, it is a journey ‘for you’.
But the word lecha doesn’t only mean ‘for you’, it also means ‘to you’.
It now suggests that the journey of covenant, and Judaism, is a journey of self-discovery. At the end of the road we travel, we are to meet our true selves. Lech lecha now translates as ‘go toward yourself’.
For the first three generations of our ancestry, our Matriarchs and Patriarchs each embark on their own lech lecha journey that takes them to different Jewish realities. Each of their journeys is unique. Once Jacob, our last ancestor, lies on his deathbed, he passes it to his descendants as an inherited legacy.
Each Jewish person inherits the invitation. Lech lecha, walk a path of unknown discoveries filled with challenges and surprises. It is never guaranteed to be only good, but it is always guaranteed to feel right when you find your unique lech lecha path.
We sometimes make a life decision that can shape the years ahead, but the life journey of lech lecha sets our feet on a path that began long before us, and will extend far beyond us. The future imagined by Abraham and Sarah, and the vision they bring to the world, is only surpassed by the courage of this moment as they answer God and take a first step.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
It takes ten generations for the world to move from Adam to Noah, ten generations to go from creation to destruction. Yet, ten generations after Noah, we will read of Abraham. Throughout the ages, Jewish commentaries have compared Noah and Abraham, as they represent such different portraits of a hero.
Noah, knowing the world will be destroyed, doesn’t argue with God – he simply obeys. Abraham, being told a region of Sodom will be destroyed, mounts a moral argument with God about sweeping judgments. It seems that Abraham is the model of a hero, yet Noah and Abraham are both described with the same word: ‘Tzadik’.
The Sages tell us that a righteous person, a ‘tzadik’, is someone who stands firm in their morals, no matter what is going on around them. In other words, a hero is defined by context. Noah is righteous because he doesn’t have blood on his hands. He doesn’t actively save people, but he doesn’t actively kill them, which was the cultural norm of his time. He is righteous because he is blameless. Abraham is righteous because he moves beyond being blameless and speaks for the potential victim. His argument with God is not for those who are suffering, it is for those who will suffer in the future. In this regard, both Noah and Abraham stand side by side in their righteousness – they both take their cultural norms one step further.
When we think of Torah in our lives, we do not think of it as standing far from us and our culture. On the contrary, we contextualize Torah into our lives and have it strengthen us to take even one step forward. A hero could be someone who stays calm when others are lashing out, or someone who sees the outcome of suffering and tries to intervene before it starts, or someone who gives their time to support someone in a culture where every minute is accounted for and scheduled.
Noah and Abraham, so distinctly different, both show us there are heroes among us all the time, we just need to understand that subtle gestures can also be heroic.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
We have danced, celebrated, fasted, and prayed for weeks, as we entered the High Holidays, moved through them, and now truly begin our Jewish new year. This Shabbat, we begin reading the Torah again with the first chapters of Genesis, parashat Bereishit.
We read of the beginnings of the universe, the world as we know it, and the human condition. Einstein believed that the universe is not a defined, static thing, but that it continues to expand. Our Sages taught us that creation renews itself every day, and that the creative elements God embedded into the universe will always renew. Our worlds of science and faith are both telling us that nothing around us stands still – everything moves toward growth and expansion.
With that in mind, we do not read the book of Genesis again, we read it anew. It has new things to tell us, unique perspectives we haven’t heard before. The entire Torah begins with the word ‘Bereishit’ – ‘in the beginning’. It begins with the letter ‘b’ (bet), the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Our commentaries point out that it would be more appropriate to begin the Torah with the first letter, ‘a’ (aleph). One reason is to show that there is always something more to know, something that pre-exists, something connected with ‘a’ (aleph) that is hidden and inviting us to explore. But the Torah must begin with the second letter because we know we are entering a process that is already moving forward.
Though we are careful not to read Torah searching for endings – we engage with Torah as we search for beginnings. Each person finds their unique starting place, knowing there is so much that exists before them – before anything they recognize. The goal is not to unlock a mystery of the past, it is to courageously step in and enter the expansion.
I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.
Parshat Matot-Masei: Try Your Best – Then Pray for Luck
We live in a world that floods us with information and perspectives, making it possible for us to prepare ourselves for almost anything. I remember planning my schedule around unknown driving times, hoping traffic would be on my side so I wouldn’t be late for anything and trigger a cascade of lateness for the rest of my day. GPS technology appeared, and it quickly moved from providing me with maps to providing me with real-time traffic updates. My phone’s GPS now lets me know when to leave my house and arrive at my destination on time in the future, just by inputting the date and time I plan to drive. If there should be a sudden mishap on the road, my GPS will reroute me around it to fulfill the singular purpose of getting me there on time. Luck has been taken out of the equation.
A few years ago I was talking to a woman who lives in Alaska and she told me a friend of hers had a car with GPS. She said it was cute but useless. I asked her why it was useless (thinking it might be a signal problem) and she told me that most of the year the roads are buried under snow and ice so what difference does it make if the GPS tells you which road to take. She said that starting in grade school they’re taught how to survive in sudden bad weather and then hope that luck is on their side. In her world, technology is cute but training and luck carry the day.
The very notion of luck implies that success or failure are determined by some outside force, usually random. It seems to be a concept foreign to Judaism, where things in our lives speak of our intentions as filtered through our actions. In fact, the way we use the word luck in English has no counterpart in Hebrew. Rather than wishing someone good luck, in Hebrew we would say ‘behatzlacha’, which means ‘with success’. It is a statement of outcome, unlike luck, which is a statement of process.
So, what do we do with a Jewish calendar that implies that some months are lucky and some months are not? The Talmud tells us that the month of Adar is a lucky month for the Jewish people. It is the month when we celebrate Purim, and although Haman drew lots to decide when to attack the Jews, the lot came out on our lucky month, so we were advantaged at a time when we faced a planned genocide. According to our understanding, God’s protection was hidden in the fact that the lottery resulted in Adar.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true for the month of Av. It is considered to be the unlucky month for the Jewish people. It is the month of the destruction of our ancient Temples, the month of expulsions, the month in which Aaron died, the month when things align negatively.
This Shabbat is when we mark the beginning of the month of Av.
Where are these ideas of luck coming from? In this week’s Torah reading, parshat Matot-Masei, the people are told how to allocate portions of land to the tribes once they all enter Israel. First, everyone is told that land portions should be designated by the size of each tribe — larger tribes get more land. Interestingly, the Torah then says that each tribe will receive its land allocation by drawing lots. The commentaries immediately question which one it is. A rational reckoning would say tribal size corresponds with land size. Conducting lots would say that it’s the luck of the draw, so everyone has equal opportunities to a windfall.
I view it as a beautiful way to remind us that while we try to approach everything around us with cold, rational logic, we should always be humble enough to accept that some things lie beyond us. The Zohar tells us that everything depends on a bit of luck from above. In fact, the word ‘mazel’ (as in Mazel Tov) means ‘drippings from above’. The Sages told us that God wove inclinations into the fibers of creation. Some months will incline toward the positive while others will not.
We also know that each month in the Jewish calendar has an animal paired to it. The month of Av has a lion — it represents the predatory aspects of a lion and its ability to destroy. But we also know that the lion is the animal connected with the ancient tribe of Judah. There it represents strong leadership and ultimate redemption. Things in creation may incline a certain way, but the world is a dynamic place of opportunity and change. The two lions have opportunities to engage, and it can make us stronger.
As Av begins, and we read of land assignments and lotteries in the Torah, we remind ourselves that for a few weeks we plant our feet strongly on the ground and search for the opportunities to improve what we see around us. With a bit of luck on our side, negatives can become positives.
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I had an interesting conversation at our online coffee this week about prophecy. Judaism no longer believes in prophecy. Not that it doesn’t exist, but that it doesn’t work. The goal of the prophetic era was to have people change their behaviours and improve. Prophecy ended because, it seems, no one ever wanted to repent or change their ways. We don’t like being told we’re doing it wrong, and we especially don’t like someone who thinks they’re speaking for God telling us we’re doing it wrong. Even if we were to admit we don’t get everything perfect, and so, perhaps, we’re doing things wrong, we don’t want someone else to tell us how to do it better. Literally put, prophecy is God, the Parent, constantly looking over your shoulder and telling you how wrong you are, how you’ve failed, and how you should fix your life. And while truth is on the side of the prophet, none of us want to hear it.
I remember transitional moments in my life, when I got married, when I had kids, when I had to figure out how to raise them… all those moments with my parents’ voices in my head. The recurring phrase I kept hearing was ‘one day you’ll know what I mean’, it’s the hauntingly truthful phrase we all encounter at some point. With age, we all come to realize how our parents were probably right most of the time…but none of us want to live in that realization every moment. Prophecy can’t possibly work.
Interestingly, the Torah spends very little time talking to us about prophecy and much more time talking to us about accountability. The Torah is not interested in how we judge each other as failures, it’s more interested in how we can redirect our mistakes. I am accountable to look at myself honestly, acknowledge the mistakes, correct them, and try better next time — knowing I will stand again in this cycle of error and correction, as I make my next mistake — I’m only human after all.
When we all stand together in that system of values and reflection, we stand as a people. When some of us consider ourselves privileged, closer to God, hearing the Divine Voice telling us Torah speaks exclusively to them in the ways only they can hear, that’s when we are told to respond and push back.
In this week’s Torah portion, parshat Emor, God tells Moses to instruct Aaron and his sons, the priestly class, on how they should behave. Most of the laws are particular to them and the lives they must lead as ritual civil servants. That’s not the part that’s unusual. The commentaries raise the question about why they are being forbidden to do the things everyone else is forbidden to do? Why do those laws have to be repeated here?
The priests are forbidden to create bald spots on their heads out of sorrow. But earlier in the Torah we were all forbidden to create these bald spots during mourning. The priests are told not to gouge their flesh or cut themselves as a show of grief — something we were all forbidden to do. Why the repetition?
The Torah is addressing the danger of defining a group within the people as facilitators of the holy. The risk is the perception of holy privilege; the risk is the conclusion that the same rules that apply to everyone, somehow don’t apply to them. The Torah shuts the door to that thinking before the door can open.
In the future, Israel will demand that the prophet, Samuel, anoint a king for us. God tells Samuel to make sure the king knows that he is subject to the same laws of Torah to which Israel is subject. Close the door of privilege before it opens.
Today, the whole world is sitting vulnerable to Covid 19, the deadly, mutating virus we are yet to subdue. Judaism has told us, more times than we care to remember, that we are commanded to act as a people, secure the health and safety of ourselves and those around us. Our Jewish values and Jewish law never waiver on this. And yet, we still know of Jewish places that think the laws against gatherings, and staying at home to keep everyone safe, somehow don’t apply to them. The risk of feeling privileged is not unusual, but having Jewish leaders who support that view, and do not step forward to close that door, is baffling.
Today, Lag BaOmer, is a day for us to celebrate Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. A sage from the second century who opened the world of Jewish mysticism for us and offered us the ‘keys to the kingdom’. A man who endured and lived in the extremes of creation to finally emerge into the world by understanding the delicate balance of it all. A brilliant teacher who told his students that if they are to seek him out, as he protects himself in a cave, they are only to seek him out by disguising themselves from the enemy patrols — they are to only seek him if they too can stay safe.
Unfortunately, there are groups of people within the Jewish community throughout the world who feel that their particular school can remain open while other schools must close, or their synagogue can gather in numbers while other synagogues must not. The Jewish response to these groups is often to remain silent for fear of speaking words of judgment. They are being viewed as the ‘other’ groups. But, we stand as one people, regardless of whether or not we agree with individual choices. We must not forget that if we are silent when we should be protecting each other, we are also deaf to the words of Torah.
Objecting to Jewish values that are ignored, and speaking up to secure the safety of others, is not a moment of prophecy, because we know prophecy won’t work. We are one people and we are reflected in each other. Speaking out against community members who feel entitled is not prophecy, it’s peoplehood.
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