Category: Torah

The Text(s), the tribe, the learning, the being. (With a bit of random spirituality mixed in.)

Righteous Rage

THEY WANT US TO FEAR.

That’s not going to happen.

The 15 Jews martyred in Sydney are a cross-section of the Jewish world: Two rabbis. A Ukrainian survivor of the Holocaust. A pre-Bat Mitzvah girl. An Israeli. And ten others. All killed for the “crime” of being Jewish in public.

There are no words to express our shock, anger, and grief at this vicious and hateful turn of events, because you know them all anyway, because they’ve all been said before, again and again and again.

What I will say is this: We are not leaving. We are not cowering. We are not giving up our identity. We are who we are, as we’ve been for millennia, and will be – G?d willing – for millennia more.

We are an eternal people, and we will survive.

Deal with it.

Reading Assignment

WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW, stop – and order from your favorite bookseller Liel Leibovitz’ How the Talmud Can Change Your Life (Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book). It’s a breakneck-speed, 272-page survey of Jewish history, bringing to life the key sages and lively times of the Talmud like never before, with illustrations drawn from Aldrich Ames and Billie Holiday and Weight Watchers and the Dewey Decimal System. I read it in three days, only grudgingly taking time for sleep and meals; it’s mildly profane and very learned and joyful and engaging and funny and sweeping and heartbreaking and really, really, real. You owe it to yourself, and to your understanding of Judaism, to read this book.

Seriously. Do it now.

Never Enough

AS A TEACHER of Jewish children and adults, it’s my job (and joy!) to soak up as much Torah as I can – in the broad sense of “Torah” as “the entire corpus of the Jewish textual tradition.”

Fortunately, there’s no end to it, which makes for some pretty challenging (and rewarding!) job security.

What dwells among those who study Torah together?

But Torah isn’t meant to be studied alone. As it happens, I am blessed (or, if you prefer, lucky) to be involved with a tightknit community of very learned and dedicated individuals, some of whom I’ve known for years, who continually teach me more than I can ever impart to them. Please allow me to introduce you.

The first group of Torah scholars hails from 2001, when my copilot had the great idea to study the weekly portion with our co-congregants on the Shabbat mornings that we weren’t studying with our rabbi once a month. We all met in our living room, and though many no longer walk this planet, others have taken their place, and the dozen-or-so of us now converse online (thank you, COVID) for ninety engrossing minutes every Saturday.

Around 2014, a handful of would-be learners commenced living-room meetings on Thursday mornings at the behest of RM, who wanted to study Mussar (Jewish ethical spirituality). Once again thanks to the pandemic, we shifted Zoomward for an hour on Wednesday mornings and collected a small number of fellow students. Though we’ve now worked our way back to Mussar, we’ve also tackled the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel, as well as the pithy rabbinical wisdom of Pirkei Avot.

Then there’s the hourly dive into various texts with two veterans of the preceding collectives: Thursday mornings with RT (a wise and humble night-owl with whom I’m now learning one of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks‘ Torah commentaries), and TR (a brilliant and outspoken mathematician-philosopher with a taste for Maimonides) on Monday afternoons. For nearly two years, it has also been my great pleasure to study by phone for fifteen minutes on Wednesday mornings with BE, a hyper-articulate professional writer, as part of the ongoing program Partners in Protection. And just this past Wednesday, my longtime convalescent friend RR and I took up the weekly Torah portion – partly to learn, and mostly to take her mind off her poor health.

Our rabbis tell us that whenever people speak words of Torah together, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) dwells among them. Whether or not that’s true, I do know what dwells among those who study together: joy. And isn’t that the same thing?

New & Then

(A recent sermon. Skip it if you like – you won’t hurt my feelings.)

THERE IS AN OLD STORY about a rabbi who was so engrossed in his Talmudic studies that he didn’t pay attention to the weekly Torah reading. When he was asked by his congregation to deliver a sermon, he ascended the bimah and said: “A good sermon should be about the week’s Torah portion. It should also be true and concise. I do not know what this week’s Torah portion is. That is the truth, and it is concise. Shabbat shalom.”

Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher – has a similar concise moment in this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy. The book is Moses’ recounting and personal perspective of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. According to the 13th-century Torah commentator Nachmanides, our portion finds Moses wrapping-up the mitzvot – the 613 commandments incumbent on all Jews. Nachmanides says that Moses finishes this long and winding list with Deuteronomy 26:16-17, which reads: “Your G?d Adonai commands you this day to observe these decrees and laws; observe them faithfully with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed this day that Adonai is your G?d, in whose ways you will walk, whose decrees and commandments and laws you will observe, and to hear [G?d’s] voice.”

Notice the repetition of the phrase “this day” – “hayom hazeh.” In verse 16, G?d commands us to keep the mitzvot. In the very next verse, we affirm our willingness to do just that. And what is the upshot, the payoff? That we will hear – “shema” – G?d’s voice. Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

One understanding of this could be that doing the mitzvot will add a perception of the Divine to our lives. Keeping Shabbat, welcoming the stranger, paying our employees on time, and observing the festivals – including the upcoming High Holidays – might not bring us material success. But the mitzvot might benefit us in other, more subtle and transcendent ways. They help us become better people by keeping us mindful of the fragile interconnectedness of all things – and in turn, by making us more appreciative of life’s great and small miracles.

But that’s harder than it sounds. After all, keeping hundreds of commandments is a heavy responsibility. And having to keep them every day for the rest of our lives? Help!

However, one of our most famous Torah commentators proposes a solution. Rashi – wine merchant by day, devoted scholar by night – speaks to us from 11th-century France. He says: “The mitzvot should always seem as new to you as on the day you were first commanded to observe them” – this day!

Time can be experienced in two different ways. Sometimes, it’s linear – each day slipping from the future into the past. Sometimes, it’s cyclical – with different seasons bringing their own special blessing, including birth, life, death, rebirth. Jewish time is both linear and cyclical. For example, we celebrate the holidays in the same way every year. But each year finds us in a different physical, intellectual and spiritual place. We grow more mature and – we hope! – more wise, or at least more experienced.

But all we really have is “hayom hazeh” – this day, which has never been before, and will never be again. So my question today is, “How do you make your observances fresh and new, and meaningful to you?“

G?d’s Hamsters

(With welcome help from special guest star Ann Autumn.)

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” – Samuel Beckett, Endgame

You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been.

Mr. Beckett, most famously the author of Waiting for Godot, was not Jewish. By all accounts, though raised in a religious home, he identified as atheist. Yet the above quote could have been describing this week’s Torah portion, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), the first parasha of the Torah’s final book.

Moses begins “his” book – a 14,294-word Mosaic monologue – by recalling in some detail the Israelites 40-year desert trek; i.e., the events of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

In doing so, our greatest prophet reveals an important truth: You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been. What do you see when you reflect back on your journey? As with Torah’s cast of characters from Genesis forward, along the way there have been others shaping your path – your malachim (“angels,” or “messengers”), your pharaohs, even the occasional stranger pointing the way. As someone once said, “I promise you that along your path you have been helped by people whose names you will never know.”

May we each and all continue forward, looking back when necessary, recognizing that – just as Deuteronomy takes us directly to Genesis – endings are also beginnings, and yet: we go on.

Bargain Abasement

Sermon delivered last night (2507.25). I won’t be offended if you sit this one out.

HERE’S A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Not every Israelite settled in the Land of Promise – but then again, that was by choice.

The Torah this week, in Parshat Matot/Masei (the final portions of the Book of Numbers, 30:2-36:13), lays out the scene. The adult children of the redeemed Israelite slaves are poised at the border of Canaan, on the Jordan River’s eastern bank, about to enter the land G?d had gifted to Abraham and his descendants. They are fresh from a 38-year wilderness-wander, and are aching to become Divinely sanctioned farmers, herders, and tradesfolk.

However, there’s a small hitch…

However, there’s a small hitch: the tribes of Reuven and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, want to stay put. They are cattlemen – cowboys, if you will – and the east bank of the Jordan is prime cattle country. They’d rather remain there than take their tribal portion with everyone else in what’s soon to become the Land of Israel.

As he often does in such circumstances, Moses gets a bit … peeved. “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” he cries. “This is what your fathers did, when they spied out the land and brought back tales of giants and unconquerable cities. They took the heart out of the people, and caused them to wander for decades in this desert wasteland. You’ll do the same!”

Unfazed, the tribes counter Moses’ rebuke by agreeing to give in order to get. They promise they’ll enter Canaan first as shock troops, and only return to their beloved ranches once the land is duly subdued. On hearing this, Moses is mollified. He even says that if they do what they say, they will thus win G?d’s approval.

These two-and-a-half tribes are fine exemplars of the principle of negotiation – giving up something to get something greater in return.

Torah is rife with negotiation, especially negotiating with G?d: Jacob vowed that if G?d saw to Jacob’s basic needs, the runaway patriarch would build G?d a holy shrine and tithe all Jacob’s belongings to his Boss. Abraham famously argued with G?d over the fate of the cruel Sodomites. And Moses talked G?d out of destroying the Jewish people in the wake of the Golden Calf incident by saying, in essence, “What would the Egyptians think?”

So my question tonight is: Have you ever been willing to give up something in order to get something else you wanted? Perhaps even for a greater cause?

[pass the mic: many comments, including one woman’s tale of giving up a well-paying job she hated in order to pursue right livelihood, and another woman’s account of choosing her heartthrob over the scholastic life]

Thank you, everyone. May all our deals, especially for our ideals, turn out at least half as well as they did for our ancestors. Shabbat shalom.

Talk Shop

DUE TO THE Hebrew calendar’s complexities, we sometimes double up on the weekly Torah readings. The first of this week’s two portions, Matot (Numbers 30:2-36:13), concerns the laws of vows. Words are supremely powerful in Judaism – after all, our Torah holds that G?d created the universe by speaking it into existence – and how we use them matters. Our words can hurt or heal, create or destroy, bring people closer or push them apart. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” May our words be truthful, kind, and uplifting, each and all when necessary – and don’t forget to add a little humor!

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