parsha

Parshat Vayera: But It Was Just a Glance

by

Parshat Vayera: But It Was Just a Glance

We’ve all had the experience of driving somewhere and noticing traffic is slowing down for no apparent reason.  Eventually it becomes clear that there’s a traffic accident ahead.  Everyone slows down, traffic crawls but most of the traffic bottleneck is not caused because of the actual accident but because everyone is slowing down to look at the accident.  Exactly what are we all looking for?

It is one thing to slow down because something unusual has happened on the road and you want to be cautious with your driving, things might be obstructing your lane.  Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case.  Usually it is that driving has momentarily turned into a spectator sport.  We are watching the accident, taking in the vehicular damage and noticing if there are any injuries.  Helping someone who needs it might be our original intent in slowing down but, if help has already arrived, why are we still slowing down?  We have become spectators.

There is a German word, ‘schadenfreude’, which describes the pleasure someone derives from the suffering of another.  It refers to the passive pleasure, not relating to anyone who causes the suffering of another – ‘schadenfreude’ refers to the spectator.  It is not someone who is curious or questioning what is happening, it is the person who knows there is suffering and wants to observe from the peripherals, feels pleasure for knowing they are better off at this moment.  It is a dark side of the human condition.

I remember being in Israel when I was a student and sitting in a ‘monit’, a public taxi car, travelling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.  Along the highway there was an accident where we could see cars stopped on the grass between the inbound and outbound lanes.  There were also people lying on the ground and a few people sitting there.  No one was moving.  Our taxi pulled over to the side of the road as did all the cars driving in both directions but no one got out of their cars.  I was confused about what was happening and I asked the driver if we were getting out to help.  He said, ‘not yet’.  We waited a few more minutes, as did everyone else in all the cars that had stopped.  I asked the person sitting next to me why no one is getting out to help and he said we’re all waiting to make sure it’s real.  It took me a minute to understand that what we were all seeing could actually be a trap — an ambush — to draw in as many civilians as possible before the actual attack occurs.  In other words, use our compassion for each other as a weapon against us.  Another dark side of the human condition.

A friend of mine told me a story a few years ago about his motorcycle trip through the Galilee in Israel.  For anyone who’s travelled those roads, you know they twist and turn through the mountains, sometimes with no shoulder or little space between the narrow road and the deep valley drop at the side.  My friend was riding his motorcycle on one of these roads as several cars were trying to pass him because he wasn’t going fast enough.  The roads are narrow and each car that passed him squeezed him closer to the edge of the pavement, onto the gravel and, eventually, off the road and down the steep incline into the valley below.  He told me all the cars immediately stopped and everyone suddenly ran down into the valley, each identifying to the other whether there was a medic among them, perhaps a doctor.  He said everyone immediately drew on their first aid training (this is Israel) and he was quickly secured, checked, assured he would be ok and help was on the way.  His injuries were minor and he profusely thanked everyone who came to his assistance.  Then it occurred to him that these were the same people who had run him off the road in the first place.  His gratitude turned to anger turned back to gratitude turned back to anger…  The grey side of the human condition.

The Torah parshah this week, Vayera, tells us of the story of Lot, his family and the citizens of Sodom and Gemmorah.  As God is destroying the region, Lot, his wife and his two daughters are being escorted to safety by an angel.  The one thing they have been told not to do is to not look backwards at Sodom.  Just as it looks like all is well for them, Lot’s wife turns to look over her shoulder at the city she has left behind, Sodom.  She is turned to salt.  In all of Torah and all of Jewish text, this is the only time that happens.  It is both powerful and baffling.  Why the strong instruction not to look back?  How is it so severe that it will cost her everything, her very life? 

The problem with looking back on Sodom as it is burning is that everyone in Lot’s family is already safe.  Lot’s wife is turning from the vantage of safety to watch the suffering of others.  She does not plead for them, she does not bargain or cry out, she stands and observes.  She has become the spectator.  The ethics of Sodom would support the passive observation of the suffering of others as a pastime but Judaism does not.  Lot’s wife is turned to salt, the ancient world’s substance for preserving things.  She is forever preserved in her choice of ethics.  By watching others suffer, taking no stance against it, while enjoying her safety, she has preserved the ethics of Sodom.  We should not focus on her as being punished but as sending the message that these dark sides of the human condition should stay in the fires of Sodom.

There are some places in the world today where someone is obligated by law to stop and help someone in distress.  Other places do not legally obligate anyone to stop.  Interestingly, there are places which do not obligate anyone to stop, but if you choose to stop, you are now obligated to help.  Part of this is to prevent the misunderstanding that could occur when someone sees someone else stopping to help.  I would assume the person who has stopped will help and therefore I don’t need to stop.  I would assume the person who has stopped will call 911 and therefore I don’t need to call 911 — resulting in nobody calling 911.  Coincidentally, or perhaps not, a benefit of this law could be that we don’t build a culture of passively watching another’s suffering.  

Unfortunately, traffic accidents are common on our roads.  We will slow down to preserve safety and we should watch to make sure help has arrived.  Once we know that has happened, Judaism then tells us to put our eyes forward and allow people who are vulnerable to have their privacy and their dignity in this moment.  Let Lot’s wife stand and stare.

Have you ever wondered what all these books Rachael refers to are? Been curious about the differences between them and what they’re each used for?

Join us on November 17th for a shiur event – a 45 minute class presented by Rachael – to learn the answers to these questions. Information and registration can be found on our Learning Page.

Parshat Lech Lecha: Trick or Treat…A Tough Choice

by

Parshat Lech Lecha: Trick or Treat…A Tough Choice

This coming Shabbat is Halloween.  A time of ghosts and goblins and scary stories.  In fact, here is my scary story for this Halloween:

2020 

(–couldn’t resist)

Halloween is an interesting time for the Jewish community.  I remember the principal of my Jewish day school coming into each class every year and telling kids they should not go out for Halloween.  I was taught it was a Christian holiday that was celebrated by hateful people who would hide behind masks and start pogroms.  He painted vivid pictures of Jews hiding in basements until Halloween was over and that it would break his heart if any Jewish kids from his school would engage in this horrible holiday (we have definitely mastered the ‘Jewish continuity through guilt’ pedagogy…). 

When I had my own kids, the question of Halloween came up.  As a day of spooky stories and ghosts and goblins, I always revisited my thoughts on Halloween. As much as I have always loved ‘B’ horror movies and all things spooky scary, I just couldn’t get past that whole Christian pogrom thing.  And then, listening to the radio one day, I had an epiphany.  I tuned-in to a talk show discussing why Halloween was such a great holiday.  Several speakers discussed that they are connected to Halloween because it is one of the few holidays that has nothing to do with religion.  To them, Halloween is completely secular, a celebration of the dark side and the mystery around us.  I gasped, how could they not know this is a Christian holiday?  That’s when I realized that I, a Jewish woman, had taken upon myself the religious memory of another faith.  If others don’t remember the hatred Halloween could embody, why was I holding on to it?  Is it not better to have that kind of holiday move toward secularization?  Should I not be helping it along so that it would never again occur to anyone to use Halloween as the ‘mask’ of their hatred?

I decided to let go of my burden of Christian memory and take my little one out on Halloween.  Now I was faced with explaining why it was ok to approach strangers’ doors (something I had taught her she should never do) and ask for candy (something I had most definitely drilled into her she should never accept from a stranger).  I taught her the phrase ‘trick or treat’ and when she asked me what it meant I explained to her that if they don’t give her a treat she can now play a trick on them (but I was trying to teach her not to be mean to others) and I realized the problems of Halloween were larger than the Jewish thing.  

As Jews, we have always been tasked with how to encounter the cultures around us.  If they do not ‘other’ us, should we ‘other’ them?  Is anything that once had some connection to another religion now off limits, no matter what cultural evolutionary changes have occured?  Technically, January 1st is a Christian holiday, it is the day Jesus had his bris (8 days after Christmas) and entered covenant.  Would we now say that since it has its roots in a Christian moment, no Jew should recognize or celebrate New Year’s Day?

Interestingly, there are clues to these questions in this week’s parshah, Lech Lecha.  God has told Abraham and Sarah to begin a journey with God. Great promises are made and they accept.  As soon as they arrive in Israel, there’s a famine and they need to leave to search for food.  They go to Egypt.  Afterwards, we are told that Abraham’s clan has grown too large to accommodate both his own wealth and the growing wealth of his adopted son, Lot.  Abraham tells Lot to choose a neighbouring region and settle there.  Lot chooses Sodom because it has plush land and strong economic growth possibilities, but the Torah tells us that the culture of Sodom is evil.  It doesn’t take long before Lot’s life is in jeopardy.  The region erupts into civil war and Lot is targeted and taken hostage.

We choose the cultures we live in.  Lot chose economics over morality and grew wealthy at the expense of always looking over his shoulder.  After saving Lot’s life, Abraham turns to God and asks how he can be sure that the wonderful Divine promises will really come true (to be fair, there was a famine, a civil war and a hostage rescue so far).  God and Abraham enact ‘the covenant between the pieces’, a mystical ritual to ‘sign’ the first draft of covenant.

Abraham did not learn about signing covenants from God.  God had communicated everything as a promise secured by God’s word — Abraham wants God to sign on the dotted line.  That was something Abraham learned from his home culture that he now imports into Judaism.  Abraham was told to leave his past life behind but that did not include leaving positive cultural lessons behind as well.  

Throughout the ages, we have developed a keen filter about Judaism and the cultures we live among.  We decide what gets through the filter, and Judaism has been enriched throughout the millennia by the positive choices we’ve made.  When a culture prioritizes morality over wealth, we are well within the teachings of Abraham and Sarah, and when it prioritizes wealth over all else, we have made Lot’s choice.

In some Jewish communities today, I still hear the ongoing debate about ‘to Halloween or not to Halloween’.  It’s not an easy question.  In the modern world, religious holidays can move toward secularization before they might fade from our culture.  We’re privileged to live at a time when we can recognize what is happening, and actively choose if, and how, it might enter our Jewish homes.

It’s a tough choice…but, at least it’s not a scary one.

Parshat Noah: Zen & the Art of…Wait, Was That My Phone?

by

Every now and again I look at my kids and marvel at how different they are from me.  They are, of course, their own individual persons, but they come from me, and they carry my DNA in their cells which will pass to their children…so how different could they really be?  But, we all know, my DNA sitting inside their cells does very little to shape them in my image.  Even so, over the years, I have tried doing things with each of them that they have suggested, and since it clearly interests them, I hoped it might interest me as well.  One of these moments was the day I tried hot yoga.

One of my daughters explained to me how much she loved it and I need to go with her so I could love it too.  She remembered that I used to be very involved in yoga exercises but she forgot that I overheat easily and prefer cold climates to hot ones.  The moment we entered the yoga studio I knew I’d made a mistake.  As everyone gathered for the class, the temperature was only slightly tropical so I thought it might be ok until I was told the temperature would be turned up every few minutes.  The instructor introduced herself (her name was Blossom…I kid you not) and she explained to everyone how vital it is to leave the world outside the studio.  This space is about our breathing, said Blossom, it is about relaxation and letting go, so all electronics are to be outside the studio.  She said it with a smile, a glow, an ethereal glint in her eye.  

The class started, but within 10 minutes I had overheated and wondered if Blossom would mind if I poured my water bottle over my head. I could do it quietly, no one would need to know and everyone was already so drenched in sweat I wondered if anyone would even notice the puddle…but then IT happened.  The woman on the mat next to me had her phone on vibrate and…yes…it vibrated with an incoming call.  I barely noticed it, but Blossom immediately appeared out of nowhere and gone were her smile, her glow, her ethereal glint in the eye.  This was Blossom Imperial Guardian of Hot Yoga.  “GET THAT PHONE OUT OF HERE!!” (the capital letters aren’t because she yelled but because the bite in her tone was worse than if she’d yelled).  The woman guilty of the phone violation apologized but Blossom was having none of her apologies – not until the phone was gone and the woman with it.  Once the offending woman was exiled from the hot yoga paradise, Blossom’s smile reappeared as she floated from mat to mat to encourage our relaxation.  I only lasted a few minutes longer, I needed to recover from the heat but mostly I needed to recover from Blossom.

Interestingly, I usually think of my hot yoga experience when we read this week’s Torah portion, parshat Noah.  We know the story so well, Noah built the ark that God told him to build, he put animals and plants in it and God flooded the world destroying everything except what was in the ark.  The grandeur of the narrative easily overtakes the nuances.  

The Torah states that the world had become ‘corrupt’ and that’s why God decided to destroy it.  The Sages question what kind of corruption could have warranted such a Divine response.  One of the answers is that everything had denied its true nature and chose to express other than what was its genuine expression.  According to this midrash, you could plant corn but the earth would decide to grow wheat instead, or an apple tree would decide to grow pears.  Everything in nature denied its authentic true core and tried to be something else – something it saw someone else doing.  The world became a place of imitation and superficial gestures, it had redefined itself.  

Chaos was returning to the world because the uniqueness of each creation was being denied, and the singular, distinctive nature of each voice was missing.  God created a world of authenticity but the world itself had erased that authenticity to produce blended chaos and a facade filled with impersonators.

After the flood, the world changes.  The seven Noahide laws are introduced, and free will gains parameter.  The ground can no longer choose to grow corn when I plant wheat and an apple tree cannot prefer to grow pears.  Likewise, although I have free will, I cannot become something other than my authentic self, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking I can.  

We often know things about ourselves and believe we have accepted who we are, but then we don’t follow through to the next step — the celebration of who we are.  Part of what I should celebrate is how easily I overheat and how detrimental an encounter with Blossom can be to me.  Part of what Blossom should celebrate is how easily she can go from ‘Zen’ to ‘superhero – defender of the tranquility’.  

What we should all celebrate is how magnificent the world is when we feel proud to be authentic.  It seems to be the Divine Plan.

If you would like to learn more about this story in the Torah and Rachael’s commentary on what truly took place, consider joining us this spring for Reserve Me An Aisle Seat Please: A Look At Noah’s Ark.

If you would like to know what happens before the ark, The Garden of Eden: The Best of Times and The Worst of Times begins November 3rd. If mindfulness is more of interest, Mussar: Finding Empowerment and Healing the World begins November 4th.

More information on our Learning Page.

Parshat Bereishit: Happy Anniversary!

by

I, like most people in the world at this moment, am spending more time at home.  One of the things I’m doing is cleaning out closets and looking in old boxes that have been stored away.  In one of those boxes, I came across a gift I had given my husband on our first anniversary.  It was a mirror for his keychain.  One side had the mirror, but the other side had the gift: the message I wanted to communicate.  It said: “I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame you.” 

Over the anniversaries, I have continued to gift my husband little mementos of my ‘truths’.  For a few years he liked white chocolate, but I would buy him dark chocolate and leave it in his pocket with a note that white chocolate is really chocolate that is confused about its self-identity and I could not support such thinking.  He has since developed a taste for dark chocolate.

I also found a small wooden plaque in the box that says: “I love you more today than yesterday –yesterday you really ticked me off!’  I’m a strong believer in clear communication.

Anniversaries are often celebrated as milestones of past events, markers of history.  But, they can also be opportunities of focused growth and insight beyond what we thought we knew from before.  Reading the Torah every week is no different.

This Shabbat, we start reading the Torah again from the beginning with parshat Bereishit.  Genesis, the beginning, Adam, Eve, snake, trees, disobedience and accountability are all introduced to us as we learn of the human condition.  Yet, when we look closely at the text, we start to notice that certain details are missing that we all assumed were there.

We usually understand that God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  Except, Eve wasn’t created when God forbid eating from that tree, only Adam was commanded not to do that.  Maybe, we assume, what’s commanded for one is commanded for all, except Jewish law doesn’t work that way.  Also, the commandment to be fruitful and multiply was given to Adam before Eve was created and Jewish law holds that for that reason men are commanded to have children while women are not.  That’s why the legal Jewish discussion surrounding birth control always asks whether we are discussing it for a man or for a woman, since they do not have equal obligation to that commandment.  In other words, if the commandments before Eve was created are only obligatory on Adam, why do we assume Eve broke a commandment by eating from the Tree of Knowledge?

We not only assume she broke the commandment, we go further and lay ALL the blame on her.  She brought death into the world, since God said that the day Adam eats from the Tree of Knowledge he will die.  Over time, this idea gets linked to a woman’s menstruation — she will have a monthly reminder that it is because of her that blood is shed in this world.  There are some communities that slap a young girl across the face when she has her first period.  Let me be clear, there is no justification for this within Judaism, but young girls have been slapped across the face globally, and within various faith and secular communities, for generations.  The shame of spilling blood has been branded onto the cheeks of girls in a horrible custom of blame.  

Interestingly, Adam was told that because he ate the fruit, he would have to toil the earth for food, but there’s no custom to hit a man in the face when he brings in his first harvest.  Somehow, Eve has been held as more accountable than Adam even though she never received that particular ‘thou shalt not’ in the first place.

The constant blame attached to the woman would lead us back into the text to see if, perhaps, Eve was as guilty as history has made her.  The Torah states that when God responded to Adam, Eve and the snake for what each had done, God is very specific with only Adam and the snake.  God tells the snake: “because you have done this thing”, and God tells Adam: “because you ate of the tree”, but when God addresses Eve, there is no mention of what exactly she has done.  There is no ‘because you…’ statement addressed to Eve, she is just told of the changes that will now occur.  It is informational not accusatory.  The Torah has neither obligated the woman, nor punished her, for anything specific that happened in the Garden, but throughout time, millions upon millions of girls are taught to pay Eve’s price and bear her shame. 

In fact, if we’re looking for who to blame for all of it, it seems no one is ready to accept accountability for anything.  When asked what happened, Eve tells God that the snake enticed her.  The snake isn’t asked anything, he’s already proved himself a liar, and you don’t ask a proven liar to testify to anything since you are setting them up to lie again–that’s on you.  When Adam is asked what happened, he tells God that ‘the woman YOU gave me…’ which is an incredibly bold way of saying that, in fact, the whole thing is God’s fault since it was God’s idea to create Eve, who was enticed by the snake, who was also God’s idea.  So, if God’s looking for someone to blame…

We thought we knew that story inside and out.  Adam and Eve eat, are punished, are exiled and we learn about sin, repentance and accountability for our actions from then on.  Except, the Torah never says they sinned, it isn’t blaming Eve for anything, no one is accepting any accountability and the only one humanity blames for anything is God.  Exactly which story did we think we knew?

We live in a world that fills us with ideas, traditions, artwork and ‘truths’ that claim to be from the Bible.  The first chapters of Genesis contain one of the most commonly known narratives in Torah and yet, on close reading, it might not be saying what we thought all along.  Starting to read the Torah from Genesis this Shabbat is the Jewish anniversary of our Torah study year.  It is not an anniversary where we hit ‘repeat’ to read it again, it is the anniversary to read it anew.

If you would like to learn more about this story in the Torah and Rachael’s commentary on what truly took place, consider taking The Garden of Eden: The Best of Times and The Worst fo Times. The next course begins Tuesday November 3rd. More information on our Learning Page.

Parshat Nitzavim: It’s My Song To Sing

by

A few years ago, I decided to get adventurous with my cooking and bought cedar planks for fancy salmon cooking.  The planks needed to be soaked in water for some time before using them and so I carefully put them to soak overnight.  I realized, when I got into bed, that I had not told my husband there were cedar planks soaking in the kitchen, and since the next day was garbage day – without question those cedar planks were going to end up in the recycle bin and my dream of cedar infused salmon filets was over.  I woke my husband and mentioned that there’s wood soaking in the kitchen, it shouldn’t be thrown out.  He said ok.  I asked if he heard me, he said ok.  I asked if he could tell me what I just told him…he said ok.  I decided to catch him in the morning before any damage was done.

The next morning, I woke up and mentioned the cedar planks to him once I saw he was truly awake.  He told me he didn’t know what they were and had already taken out the recycling, but he was happy to retrieve them, since nothing gets picked up for about an hour.  I got dressed, went downstairs and saw the wood was not back in the kitchen, my husband was having coffee and I could hear the recycle truck approaching on our street.  I quickly shouted, ‘Cedar planks! Cedar planks!’ and my husband immediately put his coffee down, jumped up, ran out the door and saved them.  What I didn’t notice was my teenage daughter was in the room watching this happen.  As my husband ran out of the house, she looked at me and shouted, ‘What the hell does that mean?!?  Should I drop and roll???  What just happened?!’  I later heard her telling her siblings: ‘I can’t explain it.  Mum walked into the room and yelled ‘cedar planks’ and papa dropped everything and ran out of the house –it made perfect sense to them.  Actually happened, I couldn’t make this stuff up.’

The phrase has now entered our family lexicon.  When something is pressing and needs immediate attention, we just raise our voice and proclaim ‘Cedar planks! Cedar planks!’ and we stop what we’re doing to listen and attend.  It makes perfect sense to us…it also looks strangely quixotic to anyone else.

Every family has their vocabulary of experiences that create phrases that are meaningful to them and opaque to anyone else.  The explanations won’t work, it is the result of shared experience.

As Jews, we have done the same thing by creating the shared experience vocabulary of a people.  ‘Rosh Hashannah is so early this year’ is meaningful to a Jew but to someone who does not share the experience it is a confusing statement – how is it early or late if it’s a calendar event?  ‘Seder madness’, ‘Pesach politics’, ‘being Jew-ish’, ‘being a mensch’, ‘raising a l’chaim’, are all examples of phrases that have immediate meaning and can’t really be fully explained with their nuances. 

This week’s Torah portion, parshat Nitzavim, is Moses knowing his final moments are imminent.  He is sounding more desperate in an effort to make sure Israel can handle what is coming.  He repeats, in various ways, that if Israel strays from God, nothing good will result.  It doesn’t matter how many times the people assure him they got the message, he will repeat it nonetheless, with increasing images of doom and destruction.  If they don’t see the sense of the matter, maybe fear will protect them.

Then Moses tells the people that two paths lie before them: life and death.  We are commanded to choose life (interesting that it’s a commandment, which means it needs intention and action).  Toward the end of his message, Moses refers to the song that he is writing and that everyone must learn the song and teach it to their children.  The song must be in their mouths and always available and meaningful.  Moses writes it, teaches it and beseeches everyone to sing it and teach it for shared singing.  The song is to keep us united and protect each other.

The ‘song’ is understood by the Sages to be the Torah.  We study it so it can become second nature for us.  We teach it to our children so it will stabilize them.  It is poetic and melodious and joyful.  The song is the place we all meet and recognize, how sad if we turn it into the place of judgment and discord. 

The High Holidays are approaching quickly, and we might not all be sitting together in our shuls as we have in years gone by. But wherever we are, we know that we can share the same song and it will always speak to us in that Jewish moment.  This year, my kids will be blowing shofars in my yard and for me that is part of my Jewish song.  It connects with the songs I’ve inherited and the ones I’ve created.  It is a call to history, to repentance, a pull on my heart with the immediacy of the day.  It is my personal ‘cedar planks!’

Parshat Ki Tavo: As Is Holiness

by

Parts of my family got together in my backyard last week for a socially distanced Friday night Shabbat meal.  Things were so different and yet so beautifully the same.  I have a basket filled with kippahs that is available to anyone who would like a kippah but hasn’t brought their own.  The basket has memories of simchas, family moments embossed on the kippah with the names and dates and labels of milestones gone by.  If I dig through that basket, I can find kippahs from friends’ weddings, family bnei mitzvahs –I dare say my own wedding kippah might be buried somewhere deep inside that basket.  When babies are born into the family we put some of their tiny hats into the basket so they can likewise have a ‘head covering’ for singing on Friday nights.  The basket is filled with various colours, textures, sizes and designs.  I learned this from my mother who has a similar kippah bag in her home –huge amount of choices in my mother’s kippah bag!  

But more choice is not necessarily better.

Whenever my extended family would get together at my mother’s for a Shabbat or holiday meal, the kippah bag would get passed around and the ‘shopping’ would begin.  I would watch each person put their hand into the narrow opening of the bag and pull out a kippah they didn’t like.  It might be the colour, the texture or even the embossed message inside that would make that person decide to put the kippah back and choose another.  By the time the bag made its way around (about 40ish people), everyone was getting a bit ‘hangry’ and starting to snip at each other about why it’s taking so long.  Toward the end of the process, people would just give out head coverings to the people around them to speed things up (funny how personal liberties get limited when people get hungry).  In the end, half the room had lovely kippahs on their heads and the other half had quirky caps, children’s hats that didn’t fit or tiny infant kippahs with the laces hanging down on each side.   We eventually had to institute the sage advice we learn in kindergarten: ‘You get what you get and you don’t get upset’ –first kippah you touch is the one you wear and no one’s allowed to judge you.

It’s not that there aren’t good choices in the kippah basket, it’s that we’re tempted to think there are somehow always better choices in there, we just have to exhaust the possibilities.  This can often become our approach to life.

The obvious downside to all of this is that the search will never end.  It is impossible to exhaust every possibility of anything, and we can fall into a life perspective of continuous searching with no arrivals.  This week’s Torah portion is named Ki Tavo, translated as ‘When you arrive’.  It contains all of Moses’ warnings to Israel about their behaviour once he’s gone.  It is filled with a short list of blessings and a really long list of curses (Covid is still with us so no need to dwell on the curses right now).  Interestingly, when discussing building an altar ‘once we arrive’ in Israel, the text forces us to scale down not up.

The altar is to be built by our hands with any tools we may need, excluding any tool made of iron.  Iron is for weaponry, and so it should never be used to create sacred altars which are meant for building peace.  War doesn’t create peace, peace is what happens in the absence of war.

The altar should be built using stones we find, not stones we fashion.  We are forbidden to hew the stones to fit each other, we need to figure out how to fill the gaps created when the stones don’t fit each other.  In other words, don’t create false conformity, learn to value the distinctiveness of each piece and how to join them effectively without changing them. Holiness is created when each part is allowed to remain its authentic self.

Through the simplest of restrictions, the Torah has shown us that any object lying around us daily can transform when we see its potential.  There is holiness within something when we recognize that its utility is speaking to its beauty which builds into its connection to other objects –when we see their value ‘as is’ (how interesting that the retail phrase ‘as is’ means an object is somehow less than it should be but we accept it and buy it in its diminished form, directly opposite to the Torah’s lesson here).

‘When we arrive’ somewhere is when we can look at what we have around us and recognize that it is simultaneously ‘as is’ and ‘as it could be’.  The journey is the search, the arrival is when my hands build–knowing I have everything I need by just looking around.

With Rosh Hashannah approaching, and many of us finding ourselves creating holy spaces in our homes, unable to go to shul, the powerful message of building an altar speaks with such relevance.  Finding the things around us that suddenly become beautiful in their mundane distinctiveness and the way they fit together to represent who we are.  

We don’t need more objects to choose from to create holiness in our homes, we know how to do this with what we have. We somehow all knew to fill a basket with kippahs of memories, or a drawer, or a bag.  Each of our homes have everything we need to create the holiness we all intuitively understood lies within us and all around.

Parshat Ki Teitzei: Is It Really Blowing in the Wind?

by

The world is now functioning online in ways I couldn’t have imagined a few months ago.  Work, school, shopping, entertainment, social encounters and shul are now part of our online existences.  It’s been an incredible learning curve for me.  When I first started shopping online, I allowed the ‘shopper’ to make replacements to food items that were out of stock.  I ended up with several non-kosher products my family couldn’t eat, and so began the weekly bag of food that I gave to my neighbour, the Anglican minister.  I shopped for clothes that weren’t exactly what I thought, patio furniture that never arrived, electronics that glitched and television channel subscriptions that I forgot would renew after the two week trial period.  I started to build my Facebook page for online social interactions, but once my friends group grew, I became too intimidated to actually post anything.  Online living has become the country I now live in, never having planned the trip.

I remember first learning of what ‘online’ meant through music sharing and something called Napster (for those of you who remember what that is, I don’t need to explain, for everyone too young to know about it, essentially we got to look at other people’s playlists and download anything they had that we wanted -it was a world where everyone was innocent and didn’t feel they were violated by you having access into my private computer files…we have since learned better).  At first, it didn’t occur to the average person that we were all infringing on copyright laws.  Then it didn’t occur to us that the artists who created all that wonderful music would never be paid for their genius.  When all these issues came out, the argument I kept hearing was that ‘if it’s in the air, it’s free.’  Radio waves, actually, any waves, once put into the air shouldn’t belong to anyone, so technically I can grab what I want out of the air.  I mean, how can you license the right to use air?

Napster was sued, people were charged, education took place and we understood that online still has protocols, legalities and decency of ownership and acknowledgments.  

We used to think the same thing about water.  When I was growing up, only science fiction described a world where people would pay money for water.  It comes from the ground, or falls from the sky, why would we pay for that?  If it’s in the air, it’s free.  Does a country own the air above it?  If so, how far up?  At what point is it outer space and ownerless?  Who decided how far a country’s border rights extend into the oceans?  If we call it ‘international waters’ does that mean all nations own it or no nations own it?

It’s a tricky concept, the idea of understanding how ownership and economics can play into the natural world we all need and share.  We’re still trying to figure it out, while the Torah introduces a perspective on all this that is unique in its understanding of nuance and human bond.

In this week’s portion, Parshat Ki Teitzei, the Torah discusses what a labourer is entitled to, in terms of ‘eating on the job’.  When someone is working in the fields of a landowner, the worker is entitled to eat the raw produce from the land, but cannot take any of it home.  In other words, until the produce of the land begins its economic journey (wheat being milled or olives being pressed, etc.), it is part of what the land gives the world and therefore the worker is entitled to share.  Once it begins its transformation into processed goods for market, it now becomes a commodity, owned by the corporate owner.

The picture in the Torah is one of ownership and balance.  Some of us own things, some of us produce what others own, some of us sell what others produce and on and on.  At some point, we must all find a moment of equalization and participation in understanding that raw materials from the earth remind us that only God truly owns the world and we impact it with the permissions the Owner has granted.  The harvesters can eat from the grapes being harvested while they are in their hands (and it’s lunchtime so they do not take time they are paid for and compound it by eating the inventory – Mishnah’s got that one covered).  Workers should not be hungry while they collect food, but food that moves from the earth to the processing plant is now owned and must not be eaten by another.

The Torah tells us that working to feed others should not leave me poor and hungry, but those who hire me to work there should not be my family’s personal food bank.  There is a balance to be struck between what nature gives us, what we put into it and how we enjoy the benefit of it.

I don’t know if the world will ever return to its pre-online realities.  Will shopping ever look the same?  I hope, one day, we can sit together in a beautiful concert hall and enjoy the full body experience of an orchestra.  If we do, the music will fill us, the notes will float in the air for everyone sitting there to enjoy.  If I worked in that concert hall and helped bring about that reality, the Torah would absolutely allow me to pause in my work and enjoy the beauty of the sound, as it would also always prohibit me from recording it to take home —even if the last note resonates and hangs in the air.

Parshat Shoftim: The Torah, the King, the Horses and the Wives

by

This week my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.  We shared a lovely dinner and talked about our memories, our kids, our life journeys, how we never imagined we would be together through a pandemic and how lucky we are that we like each other.  A relative posted one of our wedding pictures on social media with anniversary wishes —we look so young and innocent…and so well dressed.

I got my wedding gown from a wholesale factory in the garment district (apparently buying retail was simply not done back in the day).  I showed them the dress I wanted from a magazine, they took my measurements and told me I could pick up the dress two days before the wedding.  It all sounded good to me.  Once I had the dress I was told I now need shoes to go with it, a veil that matches, which of course needs the part that covers my face.  Once I have the veil worked out, I needed to decide on the headpiece for the veil…that would need to go with the dress… and the shoes… and the veil.  Now let’s talk flowers for the bouquet! I will be holding a bouquet that needs to go with the dress…and the shoes…and the veil…

The bridesmaids needed dresses and shoes and bouquets and all the bells and whistles.  Only problem was, anyone who knows me knows that I am not someone who enjoys getting involved in all these details —I was thrilled with showing the picture in the magazine, getting measured and picking up the dress just before I needed it.  I like simplicity that leads to simplicity.  Most of life never happens that way.

In this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, Israel is told about what happens when the nation decides it wants a king.  There are particular laws in place to describe what the king can’t do.  First and foremost, the king can never be a foreigner and must always be accountable to the same laws of Torah that defines the people.  In fact, the king must write his own Torah scroll so he has shaped every word, every sentence.  Interestingly, the king is prohibited from taking too many horses and too many wives.

Of all things to prohibit, horses and wives aren’t what instantly come to mind.  But when we pull back for the bigger picture, we realize the brilliance of the prohibition and the definition it provides.  Heads of government who work efficiently, quickly understand that you do not waste resources.  If I have horses, I need chariots; if I have chariots, I need warriors to drive them; if I have horses, chariots and warriors, I need campaigns to engage them.  Armed campaigns build territory and territory acquisition builds empires.  Limit the horses and you limit your army which will limit your expansion toward empire.  In other words, thrive in Israel but don’t let a king become an empire builder, that’s not what covenant is about.

Similarly, kings take wives to build political alliances and not because they are in true romantic love with each wife and build personal relationships with them.  Each wife is an alliance with her family, her nation and her king.  Wives are political chess pieces.  The more wives, the more alliances, the more strategic complexity for when you expand your territory (all those horses) and build your empire.

When we think of Jewish leadership, as described in this week’s parshah, we understand that the details in the Torah speak of the vision and its definition, and they are now essential to the picture.  Covenant details the Jewish relationship with the land of Israel and the society we build there.  It also lets us know of the temptations and human inclination towards ego, grandeur and expansion.  Limit the horses, limit the wives and thrive.

Just before my wedding anniversary this year I took out my wedding gown and changed the hanger and garment bag.  There was a tag hanging on the inside I had never noticed before.  It was a handwritten note with numbers of some code dressmakers use to communicate something.  I was intrigued, I stared and turned myself inside out trying to decipher the code.  It suddenly hit me, these were the measurements they had taken of me all those years ago. I gasped…sat for a moment before looking in the mirror and had to laugh.  I realized that the dress needed the shoes and the veil to grow into the outfit that I would never fit into again and that my marriage had grown into my family that fits me so beautifully.  

The growth of something allows for the imagination to fly high with possibilities.  Most of us are empowered to reach beyond, personal growth should be limitless but a leader’s growth requires boundaries.  The Torah shows us that the balance within power sits in the defined limits that stop unimpeded growth before it starts.

Want to read more? Check out Rachael’s previous blog on Parshat Shoftim.

Parshat Re’eh: One to Fly the Heavens

by

For years I had an arrangement with my kids that if I’m driving them somewhere they have to play DJ and only put on music they think I’ll like.  It’s a win/win since I get to hear all the great music and they had to research my favourite musicians and which genres I prefer.  There was one song that was lovely and soothing but I had to nix it from the playlist because it’s too soothing for driving –it would lull me into a trance.  It’s called Three Wishes by The Pierces and the lyrics I really like brought beautiful images to explore:

You want three wishes

One to fly the heavens, one to swim like fishes

You want never bitter and all delicious

And a clean conscience and all its blisses

You want one true lover with a thousand kisses

You want soft and gentle and never vicious

And then one you’re saving for a rainy day

The proverbial 3 wishes, the magic Genie who will grant those magic secrets of our heart, the fantasy of wish fulfillment that Freud named and we all primordially desire.

It seems to never go away.

I recently asked some young people what they would wish for if they had 3 wishes.  The usual exclusion applied — you could not wish for more wishes.  

I had some interesting responses:

One person wished for an end to the pandemic, international communication, and youth.

One person said they’d have to think about it, they’d get back to me at some point.

One person said they’d want infinite resources, infinite time, and because that was all they’d ever need, they’re donating their third wish to charity.

No one wished for happiness.

King Solomon was once asked by God what he would like as a Divine gift and he asked for wisdom.  The Sages praised his choice, saying wisdom would grant him anything else in life he could desire, wisdom would find the way to achieve it.

Even King Solomon didn’t ask for happiness.

But when you ask any parent what they want for their child, they would all, undoubtedly, say they want their kids to be happy.  So, why do we want it for those we love but not for ourselves?

When we celebrate a life milestone Jewishly, we celebrate a ‘simcha’, which means ‘happiness’.  Quite literally, planning any simcha translates as ‘we’re planning the happy’.  I send out invitations so you can join my happy and no matter what life may throw at me, I don’t postpone my happy once it’s planned.  We’ve witnessed Covid simchas proceed as planned, once scheduled, even though every detail about the event has changed, but the date usually won’t.  Happy is not to be delayed.

I also asked the same group of young people why they would choose to have Judaism present in their lives.  Why get married with a chuppah?  Why recognize a Jewish holiday?  Why put a mezuzah on your house?  I got varied and unique responses, but when I asked them if they did any of that because it made them happy to do it, only 1 person said yes…after thinking about it for a while.

We have so many Jewish expressions for being happy, but we don’t internalize how important that is within Judaism and within the Torah.  We want to get the commandments ‘right’, we want to celebrate holidays without upsetting family members who are Jewishly traditional or putting off family members who are Jewishly liberal.  We set the bar for Jewish holidays at hoping no one walks away offended and let’s all say a communal prayer that the drama stay outside the gathering.

It’s so interesting, given this week’s portion, parshat Re’eh.  It’s a daunting Torah portion.  Moses is getting ready to die and he’s addressing Israel with a warning about blessings and curses.  He reviews EVERYTHING he can think to say: don’t worship idols, keep the holidays, here are the details of the holidays, don’t worship idols, don’t eat blood, remember to tithe, don’t worship idols…

It’s exactly what we’d expect him to say:  do what God wants and you get blessings, go astray and you get curses.  The surprise isn’t in the information or the instruction, it’s the thing we hardly notice: the number of times Moses tells us to be happy.

On six separate occasions Moses commands us to be happy.  The first time he refers to being happy because we have food.  The second time we should be happy with family and friends.  The third time it lists food, family and friends and the works of our hands.  The fourth time it includes everything up to then, while we embark on a pilgrimage to meet our fellow Jews.  The fifth time it refers to the holiday of Shavuot and now includes foreigners, widows and orphans.  The sixth time it tells us to be happy in our holidays, includes everyone mentioned before and ends with declaring “And you should be oh so happy”.

Each time, we are to bring our happiness to God when we visit and remember, it’s not nice to come empty handed, always bring a gift.  

Moses uses the language of commandment to discuss our happiness.  It is not something we wish for, it is something we choose.  It starts with recognizing we have what we need — food — and it builds from there to family, to friends, to nation, universally and transformatively.  Things don’t make me happy, I choose the happy, but happy does not create rose coloured glasses.  It is happy within a world that is challenged and filled with suffering.  My obligations are not diminished by my happiness, they are simply met more fully when I choose to smile.

Moses has done what every parent would hope to do: remind us of our commitments, our obligations, our responsibilities, and then command us to find ‘the happy’, or we will grow to resent it.  As the High Holidays start to approach and we question how this year will look, it is so crucial to hear Moses remind us that the challenges will never go away so why focus there, the part we can fulfill, no matter what, is to look forward to celebrating another Jewish holiday in a way that makes each of us uniquely happy.

So why not have it all?  In a challenging moment, I could list how many things have gone wrong with my electronics in the last 24 hours…or…close my eyes and imagine I can fly the heavens, swim like fishes, find I’m covered with a thousand kisses as I save a last wish for a rainy day. 

Parshat Eikev: I’m Sorry, Did You Say Wear These Boxes?

by

I’ve been thinking about tefillin this week.  Not just because it’s in this week’s parshah, Eikev, but more because it’s summer.  In Canada, summer is the season for cottages and camping —both have been challenging this year.  So I’ve spent some time remembering summers gone by and I keep coming back to one memory when one of my sons was invited to go camping with a school friend and his family.  The friend isn’t Jewish which raised some logistical questions for us.  My husband and I decided years ago that we wanted to teach our children how Judaism enhances their lives, not restricts it.  We decided we needed to raise them with increasing awareness of how to navigate a world that doesn’t keep kosher or observe Shabbat or Jewish holidays.  We wanted them to learn where Jewish law is flexible, how it can be adhered to, while still developing relationships and having experiences in the world at large.  All was going well until the camping trip invitation.

I called the friend’s mother to ask about the food arrangements (perhaps the family is vegetarian?). She told me they camp by a lake and catch fish to eat.  She asked if that was ok and I mentioned that we’re Jewish, my son keeps kosher but he would know which fish he could eat so all should be fine. She didn’t know what kosher was, she’d heard the word, but so long as my son knew what to do, she was comfortable. Great opportunity for family education on ‘Jewish living in the wild’.  My family sat down and we went over the kosher fish identifiers (scales and fins) and refreshed on the difference (kosher wise) between hot and cold food, cooked or fresh, packaged or binned and some of the ins and outs we had taught the kids before. Everything was good to go.  We started packing for the trip and my son reached for his tefillin, which he put on every morning.  That’s when it hit me.  

I asked if his friend knows he puts tefillin on.  He said his friend wouldn’t know what tefillin is, so probably no.  He thought for a moment and then asked if it would be ok to walk away from the campsite to put his tefillin on so he wouldn’t look odd to his hosts.  I told him it would probably be ok, but if they asked why he was leaving the campsite he shouldn’t lie about it.  Then I pictured him in the woods putting tefillin on and I told him not to stand in front of a singular tree and pray, find a place with a few trees grouped together but remember to face east (some of the nuanced sensitivities Jewish law has about praying to a tree, didn’t have time to explain it all to him, too busy focussing on the food thing).  Also, don’t go too far from people because campsites always have bears nearby —any bear tracks nix the whole deal!  He asked what to say if they ask what he’s doing and he can’t lie.  I came up with a blank.  He could say he’s going to pray…in the woods…away from everyone…not too close to a tree…with a book and a velvet bag…no worries…not weird at all.

All this time I thought keeping kosher would always be the challenge and suddenly the food was easy, it was the tefillin.  We get so used to it, we forget how strange it can look to others.  I enjoy watching adolescents practice putting tefillin on.  Most often the arm straps are too tight and the skin bulges.  One wonderful moment involved a boy somehow ‘tefillining’ his arm to his head and searching for his father to untie him.  Beautiful moments of passage.

You can’t help but ask why the Torah would command us to do this, as it does in this week’s parshah.  We are to place ‘these words’ on our arms and between our eyes.  From that statement onward, we develop laws and practices of how and when and what.  According to Jewish law, every component of the tefillin has to be a product of nature, mostly animals.  Tefillin is symbolic of our partnership with God and so we turn to nature to see God’s Hand in it all.  But the boxes themselves, as well as some of the stitching, must be perfect squares.  Perfect squares don’t exist in nature —that’s entirely us.  And so the union of nature and perfect squares embodies the partnership between us and God woven together.

The configuration of tying the tefillin on the arm, and its placement on the head, spells out one of the names of God.  We are literally writing God’s Name on our bodies as we put on the tefillin.  The placement on the arm symbolizes restraining our physical might to never harm the partnership.  The placement ‘between the eyes’ puts the tefillin where the soft spot of our heads was when we were born.  The front fontanel, the soft part of the skull, only hardens in the first year of life.  It symbolizes the flexibility of our minds, our thoughts, our perspectives.  The tefillin knot at the back of the head lies on the smaller fontanel at the back of the skull that hardens between the ages of 2 and 3.  In other words,  I place the symbolic commitment of my partnership with God on the parts of my skull that remained flexible even after birth.

At one point, while putting on the tefillin, it is customary to quote the prophet Hosea: “I betroth you to me forever.  I betroth you to me in righteousness, justice, lovingkindness and mercy.  I betroth you to me in faithfulness —and you shall know God.”  It’s the statement of intent and commitment that we would all want to hear from our intimate partners and, in turn, be able to pledge to them.

In today’s world, some people choose to tattoo the names of their lovers onto parts of their body.  Jewish law prohibits permanent tattoos, but the desire to ‘wear’ the identity of a loved one, to clothe ourselves with them, seems very primal.  The Torah has told us there is a ritual where we can ‘write’ the name of God on us, commit ourselves to the partnership, restrain our ability to harm it and always remember to be flexible within the partnership —it’s called tefillin.

 The strange looking, hard to explain, cherished right of Jewish passage that embodies the expressions of love, partnership and commitment we would all crave.  My son’s camping trip with his friend went really well.  The tefillin question never came up, they were too busy asking why the fish had to have scales AND fins.