Exodus - שמות

Exodus

שמות

Shemot Exodus 1:1 - 6:1

IGNORANCE AND FEAR

The Book of Exodus, opens with an illustration how the well-known moral equation that ignorance plus fear fosters hatred and oppression.

“Now Egypt had a new king, who did not know Joseph, so he said to his people: ‘Behold, the Israelite people are more numerous and stronger than we are. Let us deal wisely with them, lest they continue to multiply and when war breaks out, they join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.’ Therefore, the Egyptians set taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor and the Israelites built the store-cities of Pithom and Raamses for the Pharaoh.” (Exodus 1:8-11)

Although the Pharaoh may have other objectives in oppressing the Israelites and the Bible and Jewish tradition picture the Pharaoh negatively, one can read this passage as a description of a leader who is sincerely concerned for the welfare of his people. Doing so makes the Pharaoh more like us and makes his actions even more disturbing. Evil people can use ignorance and fear to manipulate others, but ignorance and fear can deceive good people and dedicated leaders into permitting and performing terrible things.

Doubtless the world was and remains a dangerous, frightening place. In its day Ancient Egypt was a super-power. War was always a real possibility and the Egyptians and their leaders needed to be prepared. For Egypt, Canaan, just to the east, was a major concern.. Over the centuries, Egypt had exerted commercial and political hegemony there and yet it was a source of danger. Egypt needed to use military force to protect its interests in Canaan and Egypt itself was open to invasion from the east.

The Israelites, although living in Egypt as loyal subjects for generations, had come from Canaan and had maintained their unique, non-Egyptian, identity. The Israelites found themselves, as Jews have often found themselves, as the unknown other, a vulnerable minority.

The Pharaoh, fearing war and no longer remembering Joseph, saw our ancestors as merely another Canaanite group. He acted in ways that seemed to him and his people as reasonable and just. How could they not respond to the perceived danger our people appeared to present? The rights of the Israelites mattered less than the security of the state.

Has the world changed all that much from the days of the Pharaoh? As Jews, we are well aware of how ignorance and fear can lead to terrible results. Overcoming ignorance plays a central role in our contemporary, American Jewish agenda. We engage in dialogue not only to learn about others but also to teach about ourselves. Racism and xenophobia in all their forms concern us.

As Americans, we also know how ignorance and fear can lead to terrible results. We easily remember the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the Red Scare during the Cold War. The Japan and the Soviet Union were dangerous threats. Yet, out of fear and ignorance, we, as a nation, responded poorly.

Today we face similar challenges. There are threatening developments within the Islamic world. Yet, our lack of knowledge of the cultural and religious diversity within that world and, more sadly, of our Muslim neighbors, has led many to an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims... Resistance to mosques and community centers, canards against Sharia, Islamic law, and the willingness of some to sacrifice our constitutional rights as a technique to combat terrorism are cause for concern.

Nor is this the only example of how the combination of ignorance and fear that leads to bad choices. It has likewise crippled our ability to deal creatively with basic issues including: immigration, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases

Ignorance and fear feed upon each other. We can watch this unfold in the story of the Exodus. We can see it play out in our own lives. Yet, we know how to respond. Imbedded in our souls are also the qualities of curiosity and courage. Replacing the latter for the former in our moral equation will produce remarkable results. Try to imagine how the story of Israel would have read if the Pharaoh had drawn on them. . .

"Now Egypt had a new king, who remembered all the good that Joseph and his people did for Egypt . . ."

FROM PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER TO GOD'S CHILD

This Shabbat we begin reading the second book of the Torah; named in Hebrew, Shemot, the Book of Names. “Names” seems to strange title for a book whose contents appear at first more appropriately described by its better-known Greek derived name, “Exodus”, since the book opens with an account of the exodus of our Israelite ancestors from Egypt.

The simple explanation for this apparently strange Hebrew name is that Jews follow that ancient custom of naming a piece of literature by the significant word or words in the opening passage. The second book of the Torah begins with Eleh shemot b’nei Yisrael ha baim Mitzrayma – These are the names (Shemot) of the Israelites who went to Egypt” and the text proceeds to name all of them starting with Jacob and informs us that Jacob’s children and their families numbered seventy, not counting Joseph and his family since Joseph was already in Egypt.

With names and numbers the opening verses of Sefer Shemot (the Book of Exodus) connects us to what has already happened and what will soon occur. We already have learned much about names and naming in Sefer Bereshit (the Book of Beginnings – Genesis) and we will soon be taking a census of the Israelites after they fled Egypt in the opening chapters of Sefer BeMidbar, (the Book In the Desert – Numbers).

However, names and numbers are not incidental to the Book of Names, Sefer Shemot in which some central characters have a name or names and others are only identified by their title or function. The king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, his officers and his gods remain anonymous but Israelite men and woman and worthy non-Israelites are named including the two heroic Egyptian midwives – Shifra and Puah – and Moses’ own father-in-law, Jethro. Early in the book while God speaking from the Burning Bush instructing Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, God self-identifies with the name Ayeh Asher Ayeh – “What I am is what I am”.

The Book of Names, Sefer Shemot, often uses names as spotlights to point out who is important at a certain point in the narrative. In the story of the baby Moses all the characters, including his parents and sister, go unnamed. Though we know their names from other biblical passages, the Book of Names, Sefer Shemot, identifies them here only as a certain Levite, his wife and the baby’s sister. The baby’s savior is likewise, unnamed. We know her only as Pharaoh’s daughter and she gives the baby a distinctive Egyptian name, Moses, to which the Torah immediately gives a Hebrew etymology, a foreshadowing of the role the child will play.

In the Book of Names, Sefer Shemot, for the most part, heroes are named and villains are not. But one hero, the Egyptian princess who drew the baby Moses, remained unnamed in the Torah tradition. She is known as Bat Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s Daughter. She is merely an Egyptian woman whose place in society is defined by her relationship to her father. She plays her small but important role and then departs never to return. In the Book of Names, Sefer Shemot, the unnamed hero who rescued and named the hero who rescued the Israelites remains in the background.

Yet in the midrashic tradition, in the imagination of the Jewish people, this young woman gains a name. Jews call her Bat-ya, literally “the Daughter of the Eternal One (YHWH) based on the name of an Egyptian woman who married a clan leader of the tribe of Judah (1 Chronicles 4:18). Over time, this name has become a well honored name for Jewish women.

But in in the context of the life of this brave Egyptian woman, this was not a real name; the name her parent’s gave her, the name her friends called her, the name to which she responded. Bat-Ya, the Daughter of the Eternal, is no more a name than Bat Pharaoh, the Daughter of Pharaoh. It describes a relationship. The two names, Bat-Pharaoh and Bat-Ya, tell us about who this woman was and who she became. In Hebrew, kinship terms indicate more than a biological connection. Ben, “son” or bat, “daughter” can also refer to students, disciples or followers.

By giving this young Egyptian woman a new name, our people recognized that some names we receive and others, we earn. At the moment the Egyptian princess took in the baby she named Moses, her relationship to her father and to her role as an Egyptian princess changed. She could no longer be known as Bat Pharaoh, the daughter of her father, the cruel Pharaoh, who ordered the death of the Israelites first born. She threw off his rule and submitted herself to a different order. In that moment she rejected Egypt and its gods and power structure and accepted the God of the Israelite slaves and joined their ranks by adopting one of their own, she became a new woman and earned a new name. She became Bat-Ya, the daughter of YHVH, Israel’s God.

What her real birth given name was has long been lost. The name the people whom she saved gave her, is now the name by which she is remembered. She, like all who turn from evil to accept life’s higher calling, was reborn and renamed. She, like all who turn, became a child of the Most High. Bat-Pharaoh became Bat-Ya. By this name we honor her and through this name she challenges all of us.

BEING TRAPPED IN OUR OWN LIES

One of the sad ironies of leadership is that leaders frequently come to believe the lies they tell and then make “reasoned” decisions based on those lies, often with disastrous results. As rulers of all sorts trick us by manipulating with powerful emotions such as our fear of strangers and our worry for our security, they, too, are tricked. They come to believe their own tales, get entangled in their lies. Terrible things happen, suffering increases, and policies built on lies lead, all too often, to disgrace, dishonor and defeat.

In the second book of the Torah, Shemot (Exodus), which we begin to read this Shabbat morning, we see the disastrous results of a policy built on lies. We read how the pharaohs of Egypt manipulated public opinion to support the oppression and enslavement of our ancestors and how this policy eventually led to the defeat of Egypt, the shattering of its economy and the destruction of its armed forces. The understanding that leaders can be caught in their own lies, helps us understand the biblical expression for pharaonic stubbornness, “His heart was hardened,” and serves as an object lesson for all those who find themselves in positions of leadership and power.

The Egyptian pharaoh’s encounter with the two midwives sent to deliver obstetric care to the women of the enslaved Israelites illustrates this sad irony and foreshadows the stubbornness of the Egyptian leadership that eventually leads to disaster. In describing this encounter, the Bible shows us how a leader can be so convinced of his own lies, he can believe the unbelievable and make decisions based on his own falsehoods.

To convince his people to support his policy to enslave our ancestors with the lie that they could possibly be a “fifth column” in the time of war, he focused on their numbers and strength (Exodus 1:8-11). When oppression and heavy labor did not weaken our people, the Egyptians’ fear grew (Exodus 1:12). The pharaoh increased our ancestors’ workload still further (Exodus 1:13-14) and embarked on a policy of ethnic cleansing (Exodus 1:15 ff).

To reduce the number of Israelites and to promote their eventual assimilation into Egyptian society, the Egyptian ruler ordered two midwives serving our ancestors, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill every Israelite baby boy but to let the baby girls live. The midwives refused to do what the pharaoh asked, so they were summoned once again to the king’s presence.

When asked to explain their actions, Shiphrah and Puah responded by saying that the Hebrew women, unlike the Egyptian women, were so strong that they did not need the services of midwives (Exodus 1:19). Surprisingly, the Egyptian king accepted their explanation. He hadbecome so convinced of the super human strength of the Israelites, the statement that their women, unlike women everywhere else, gave birth without assistance seemed reasonable. The midwives’ statement reinforces his bias against our ancestors.

Later in the Book of Exodus, we see the disastrous effects of these views for the people of Egypt and for its army. Having come to believe their own propaganda, the Egyptian king and his advisors risk all and lose all in their attempt to maintain their enslavement of our “dangerous” Israelite ancestors.

Falsehoods seem to take on a life of their own. When a leader, such as the Egyptian pharaoh, bases policy on a lie, the leader not only commits himself to maintain the lie, but can actually come to believe it. As so clearly illustrated in the Book of Exodus, the danger is that such a belief encourages him to accept the incredible and build a policy on a foundation of the shifting sands of falsehood that, sooner or later, will come crashing down upon him with terrible effects.

Va’era Exodus 6.2‑9.35

THE TWO PHARAOHS

January 27, 2001

The beginning and end of our ancestors’ sojourn in Egypt center on the interaction between the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh, and a charismatic Israelite leader. In the days of the patriarchs, our ancestors found refuge in Egypt because the Pharaoh of that time worked closely with Joseph to guide Egypt safely through the seven years of famine. Generations later our ancestors left behind a shattered and defeated Egypt on their way to freedom because the Pharaoh of that time fought with Moses when he requested that Pharaoh let our people go.

The Torah tells us little about these two rulers. We remember them by their title, “Pharaoh,” not by their personal names. Our Bible relates only as much about their personalities as is necessary for the story, but what it reveals is important.

In many ways, Joseph’s Pharaoh and Moses’ Pharaoh were similar. They were both autocrats. They could both be arbitrary and cruel. The wisest and most powerful men in Egypt served them. They had access to the insight and skills of sages and magicians. Their armies jumped at their command and their people submitted to their will and their Israelite counterparts, Joseph and Moses, were both men exiled from their high positions. Yet, there was one essential difference between the two rulers — only Moses’ Pharaoh suffered from what the Torah describes in this week’s portion, Va’era, as “hardness of heart.”

What is this malady that the Torah calls “hardness of heart?” Unlike the English use of the term, in the Bible “hard-hearted” does not mean “emotionally cold and cruel.” Joseph’s Pharaoh could be as cruel and as heartless as Moses’. The imprisonment of his two loyal ministers, the Chief Butler and the Chief Baker, and the execution of the latter bear ample testimony to this aspect of his personality. However, he is not described as “hard-hearted.”

Furthermore, “hard-hearted” does not mean “obstinate, stubborn or unbending.” Both pharaohs seem to have been firm and determined men. Moses’ Pharaoh seems obsessed by his desire to keep the Israelite enslaved. On a more positive note, Joseph’s Pharaoh appears equally unbending in his determination not to squander the apparent bonus of excess wealth of the seven good to prepare to a period of hardship that might have seemed as if it would never come.

In the Torah being “hard-hearted” does not refer to an emotional state but to an intellectual one. In the Bible the heart was a center of cognition not of emotion. Proverbs, the Biblical book of wisdom ascribed to the wisest of all people, King Solomon, speaks approvingly of the “wise heart.”

Moses’ Pharaoh is hard-hearted because he is intellectually obtuse. He does not or cannot understand what is happening. Unlike Joseph’s Pharaoh who immediately responded to his strange dreams, Moses’ Pharaoh could not discern any significance in the far clearer signs and wonders performed by Moses and Aaron in the presence of his court and people.

The Torah underscores this essential difference between the two rulers in the parallels between the dreams of Joseph’s Pharaoh and the events surrounding Moses and Aaron’s first encounter with their Pharaoh’s wise men and magicians. Joseph’s Pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cows being eaten by seven lean cows and seven bounteous sheaves of grain being consumed by seven parched sheaves. When his wise men and magicians were unable to explain the dreams to him, this Pharaoh summoned Joseph, a Hebrew slave and prisoner known for his wisdom, to interpret them. Wisely, Pharaoh accepted the interpretation and Egypt could prepare for the coming seven years of hardship. (Genesis 41:1-32)

In this week’s Torah portion, however, the Pharaoh was not so wise. When Moses and his brother, Aaron, appeared before him to demand our ancestor’s freedom, Pharaoh demanded a demonstration of their power and authority. Moses, following the Eternal’s instructions, directed Aaron cast Moses’ staff down on the floor before Pharaoh. The staff turned into a serpent. This, however, did not impress Pharaoh. He brought forth his magicians and sages and commanded them to do likewise. Through magic they replicated Aaron’s miracle and their staffs, too, turned into snakes. When this happened, however, Aaron’s snake swallowed the other snake-staffs, displaying the weakness of Pharaoh and his courtiers. This Pharaoh’s response to this demonstration of his and his courtiers’ weakness was not amazement but unbelief. His heart heartened just as God said it would. Pharaoh refused to accept what his eyes had seen. As a result Egypt succumbed to a series of plagues — ten plagues in according to the Book of Exodus, but seven, paralleling the seven years of famine in the Joseph story, in Psalm 78 and 105.

Joseph’s Pharaoh and Moses’ Pharaoh were remarkably alike. They were both the most powerful men in the most powerful nation of their time. Yet, there was one significant difference. When confronted with the truth Joseph’s Pharaoh opened his eyes while Moses’ Pharaoh hardened his heart. The stories of the two Pharaohs underscore the ancient truth that a wise leader can nurture his people even in times of hardship but a foolish king can bring disaster even in times of plenty.

MOSES’S DOUBLE MISSION

This week’s Torah portion, Vaera, is set in Egypt. Moses has already returned from his exile in Midian. He has had his first and unsuccessful encounter with Pharaoh, who, in response to Moses’ request to allow the Israelites the opportunity to worship God in the wilderness, has placed additional burdens on the already overworked Israelite slaves. In addition to Pharaoh’s scorn, Moses’ own people abuse him for the troubles they believe he has brought upon them. Soon after it has begun, Moses’ mission already seems to have come to an end. He has failed as a diplomat in his attempt to negotiate his people’s freedom.

Our portion opens at this low point in Moses’ life. God resumes his conversations with the former shepherd / prince and reminds him that God has not forgotten the covenant God made with the patriarchs of Israel — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — to give them the land of Canaan. So once again God directs Moses to bring the good news of the coming liberation to the Israelites. Sadly, however, they are unable to listen to his message because their spirits have been crushed by their oppressive labors.

Undeterred, God instructs Moses to go before Pharaoh and tell the king of Egypt to set the Israelites free. But this time Moses balks. Moses questions his ability to convince Pharaoh since he was unable to convince his own enslaved people of the seriousness of his mission. Moses doubts his own abilities.

God restores Moses’ resolve by subtlety changing Moses’ mission. Moses along with his brother Aaron, who is reintroduced into the story at this moment, are no longer to serve as diplomats shuttling back and forth between Pharaoh’s court and the Israelite villages. They are told to stand as leaders in their own right and are given a two-fold mission confront both the oppressed and the oppressors. They must convince Pharaoh to free the Israelites and they must also convince the Israelites that they deserve to be free. Slavery has perverted both the Egyptian slave masters and the Israelite slaves so God directs Moses and his brother to shatter Pharaoh’s hardened heart and to restore the Israelites’ crushed spirits.

In many ways the second half of this directive, to make the Israelites worthy of freedom, was the more difficult. The years of bondage undermined the Israelites’ self-confidence. Rebuilding his people’s spirit was the challenge that Moses would face for the rest of his life.

The task of overthrowing the tyrant was relatively straight forward. The Torah requires only a few short chapters to lead us through the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea. The task of building a free nation was far more complicated. It was the work of a lifetime. Yet we know from contemporary history that if one merely removes a tyrant and does not rebuild a nation, all one does is make way for another autocratic regime. Nation building, though sometimes maligned, remains an essential element in all struggles against tyranny.

Somehow Moses succeeds in accomplishing both parts of God’s challenge. In the weeks to come we will see how Moses breaks the bonds of pharaonic oppression and how he lays the foundation for a new nation. His greatest accomplishment was not guiding our people to freedom but empowering us to be free. Leading our people out of Egypt was the necessary first step. Moses, however, proves his greatness by giving us the Torah, our people’s spiritual constitution, by establishing a system of worship that provided access to the divine to all believers, and by peacefully passing the mantel of leadership to Joshua, his trusted disciple, at the end of his days.

In the Jewish tradition, we honor Moses’ achievements by calling him “Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Teacher,” not because he led us to freedom, but because he taught us how to be free. Moses accepted God’s two-fold directive and by confronting Pharaoh’s pride and power and our people’s fear and despair he became the model of a leader who is able not only to overthrow tyranny but to create the conditions of lasting freedom. In a world still threatened by tyranny, Moses remains our greatest teacher.

Bo Exodus 10:1 - 13:16

PUNISHING THE GODS OF EGYPT

January 20, 2018

“And I will I will execute judgments to all the gods of Egypt, I am HaShem” – Exodus 12:12

God is the hero of the Exodus story. All the other characters including Moses play only supporting roles. From the moment God hears the Israelites outcry, through the ten plagues and until the waters of the Red Sea crash down upon the Egyptian army, every act of the drama reveals God’s mighty hand.

God’s unexpected victory over Egypt and Egypt’s gods casts a literary motif that we have already seen a number of times in the patriarchal narratives in Genesis onto the cosmic scale. It is the reversal story of the unexpected hero. It is the story in which the younger, weaker, smaller child receives the promises and blessings one would expect to have gone to the first born – the older, stronger, greater child. Here, however, it is not Isaac supplanting Ishmael or Jacob taking Esau’s place. Here it is the unknown God of a small, enslaved people overthrowing not only those who oppress his people, but also their gods. It is a story in which the world has been turned upside down – the weak are now strong, the slaves are now free, the oppressed are receiving tribute, and the tyrant is begging for mercy.

But more than this, in the Exodus story, creation itself is disordered. With the ten plagues God not only afflicts the Egyptian people, but challenges their gods. God directs each plague against a specific manifestation of the power of one of Egypt’s many deities – from the smiting of the life giving River Nile to the death of the first-born, including the son of the Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt. In the final act, the splitting of the Red Sea, God reenacts creation by once again reasserting God’s control over the unruly waters, the symbols of primordial chaos.

To our Israelite ancestors the world was full of powerful creatures and beings that for us exist only as folk memories of characters in ancient myths and forgotten legends. While the Israelites generally thought that it was foolish to attribute divine powers to the statues and images other people made of their gods, they sensed that the divine beings worshipped by other nations were in some fashion real.

In this way our ancestors were not unusual. It was the common belief that struggles between peoples and nations took place not only in the physical world but reflected a similar struggle in the world of their gods. The victory of one nation over another demonstrated both the superiority of the victor’s army and the victor’s gods.

If the epic of Israel ended at the Exodus, our ancestor’s memory of a powerful Israel led and protected by Israel’s powerful God overcoming the armies and divinities of Israel Egyptian adversaries would have fit in nicely into the general worldview of the ancient world. But Israel was never powerful. Egypt remained a strong, powerful nation long after our people left. There was never a great Israelite empire. For most of biblical history, our ancestors were acutely aware of being surrounded by more powerful nations and the story of biblical Israel ends with exile and foreign domination.

The spiritual breakthrough of our ancestor can be seen in the reversal of the ancient pattern – a revaluation of what it means to be great and powerful. Just as the promises to the Patriarchs do not pass to the physically powerful son, the God of Israel is not great because Israel is a powerful nation. Like the younger son whose greatness grows from his character, the God of Israel greatness emerges from that which God does for the weak and vulnerable. Israel’s God is greater than all other gods because Israel’s God is the God who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, cures the sick, raises the downtrodden and frees the enslaved. Israel’s God is the God who could render judgment against the gods of Egypt, because ultimately justice, mercy, and love will overcome oppression, cruelty, and hatred. Israel’s God is great because Israel’s God created a world that is inherently good and whose goodness cannot be suppressed forever. Sadly, Pharaoh forgot this truth so his world and his gods were shaken and, thankfully, out of that chaos, our ancestors were able to find a path to freedom.

THE SIGN OF COURAGE

As we read the story of the Exodus in the course of the annual cycle of Torah lessons and again in the spring during our Passover Seder, we hear very clearly Moses’s challenge to Pharaoh — “Let my people go!” We focus our attention on the clash between God and Pharaoh. We imagine Moses going time and time again to the hard-hearted Pharaoh and pleading with him to release our Israelite ancestors before God sends a plague even more dreadful than the one before. Then we hear Pharaoh’s firm refusal — “No, I will not let them go!” and we wait with fear and anticipation for the next horror that God will cast upon Egypt. The pattern repeats ten times until every Egyptian family has lost a loved one and Pharaoh finally relents and lets the Israelites go free.

As violent and dramatic as the stories of the plagues may be, God’s and Moses’ conflict with Pharaoh to achieve the physical liberation of our people is far easier than their struggle with our ancestors to free themselves from the spiritual and psychological shackles of slavery. Being released from slavery and learning to live as free men and women are two different matters. The former is the focus of the opening chapters of the Book of Exodus. The latter is the major narrative theme of the rest of the Torah as we watch our ancestors grow from a generation of freed slaves born into Egyptian bondage to a generation of free men and woman born in the boundless wilderness.

During the difficult and tumultuous forty years our people spent in the wilderness, the nostalgic memories of their simpler, decisionless life as slaves presented a constant temptation. In light of the real, pressing challenges our people faced daily in the desert, it was easy to forget the oppression of slavery and remember the security slavery provided — a hard but predicable life in which the bare necessities had been furnished. Often in the forty years following the Exodus, when confronted with the hardships of desert life, our ancestors looked longingly back to Egypt.

In addition, it is understandable that after being accustomed to the security of slave life, newly freed slaves might find the risks of freedom unnerving. This concern predominates the beginning of next week’s portion, Beshalach. There God directs Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt by a roundabout route because of God’s concern that on the direct route out of Egypt, our ancestors might be confronted by Egyptian military forces and lose heart.

This is not to say that our ancestors lacked courage. They were exceedingly brave, but it is hard to be free. God could break Pharaoh’s hold over them but only they could transform themselves into a free nation as they came to understand that the struggle for true freedom is a life-long exercise. First, however, they had to take the courageous and fateful step and separate themselves from their oppressors. This week’s Torah portion, Bo, tells us of their daring declaration of freedom.

During the first nine plagues, God spared our ancestors from the plagues worst effects, but Pharaoh, apparently unimpressed by both the plagues and God’s protection of the Israelites from them, still refused to let them go. The Israelites remained under Pharaoh’s control and were vulnerable to the anger of the Egyptians who had suffered so much to keep them enslaved. Then, they received new instructions from Moses, the man who, nine times before, had failed to convince Pharaoh to let them go despite all the signs and wonders. Moses announced that God instructed them to take a lamb and slaughter it for the Pesach offering and then paint the lintel and doorposts of their homes with the lamb’s blood.

What an audacious request! Moses asked them in the land of oppression, among people who despised them, to stand up, and declare themselves to be Jews. They had to separate themselves from the Egyptians, a people who had the will and the means to destroy them, by marking their homes before the tenth and, hopefully, final blow.

What is surprising is that our ancestors did exactly as God had commanded Moses and Aaron. When called upon to declare themselves free, they did so and, in doing so, they were liberating themselves. No matter what would happen that fateful night, they were already free. They were no longer responding to the demands of Pharaoh and his taskmasters. They now had a new sovereign. They answered to the call of our God. They had taken their first step towards freedom.

It took a long while for them to realize the full significance of their courageous act. As a people, they would have to travel a long and difficult road to life and freedom in a new land. None of those brave souls who painted their doorposts and lintels with the blood of the sacrificial lamb completed that journey, but the story of their courage inspired their children and grandchildren, as it still inspires us, to seek a place where they could live their lives as Jews in freedom.

“BUT THE ISRAELITES HAD LIGHT IN THEIR DWELLINGS”

According to the Book of Exodus, God manifested his divine power and authority by inflicting ten plagues upon Egypt. Each plague brought incredible physical hardship and suffering – blood befouled the drinking water, hosts of frogs, flies, locusts and wild beasts terrorized the land, hail destroyed crops and murrain slaughtered livestock. Finally, during the tenth plague, the destructive power of the divine struck down the first born of every Egyptian household.

The biblical tradition pictures these terrible events as part of a cosmic battle between God, and the many Egyptian deities, led by their presumptuous man-god, the Pharaoh. While the Torah acknowledges Pharaohs’ claim to be the legitimate king of Egypt, Pharaoh challenged God by asserting control over God’s people, the Israelites, whom God originally brought to Egypt to save that nation from the devastation of famine. God responded to Pharaoh’s refusal to release over the Israelites by attacking Egypt with a series of dreadful plagues, which brought great physical trauma upon Egypt and the Egyptians.

One plague, however, the ninth plague, the plague of darkness, stood out from the rest. Unlike the others, it caused no physical harm. Yet, it marked the turning point in the great struggle. The plague of darkness inflicted the spiritual and psychological punishment that finally shattered the resolve of the Egyptians.

Egypt was and still is a land blessed by sun light. Clouds rarely cover its sky and unlike the Land of Israel, which depends on rain, Egypt receives its water from the Nile. The ancient Egyptians saw the sun as the most powerful manifestation of divine power. The Pharaoh’s authority rested on his claim to be the sun god’s child. By plunging Egypt into darkness, God eclipsed their most potent deity and his earthly representation.

The physical darkness that lay on Egypt reflected spiritual darkness that filled the Egyptians’ heart. A devastating series of disasters had upset the regular beat of life along the Nile. The plagues demonstrated Pharaoh’s inability to protect his own people. The darkness that surrounded them reflected the darkness in their souls. As they looked across their land, the Egyptians felt the despair of those already defeated.

However, while the Egyptians suffered from the darkness, our Israelite ancestors “enjoyed light in their dwellings.” Through the spiritual darkness that fell over Egypt, they sensed the presence of their God. The light of hope now filled their homes and villages. After all these years of suffering, their God was returning for them. No longer a community of frighten slaves, they were ready to what seemed impossible: to declare their freedom by celebrating the Pesach in Egypt, by demanding their due from the Egyptians and by marching off to a new life in a new land.

In the Torah’s long battle between God and Pharaoh, the ninth plague was God’s crucial victory. The darkness that fell over Egypt marked the breaking of the Egyptian’s spiritual resolve and the light that glowed in the dwellings of the Israelites reflected their growing hope and expectation. Although the Egyptians still had to experience one more devastating blow for their power to crumble, the struggle was essentially over. The Israelites stood at the edge of freedom and would soon proclaim their liberty.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH PHARAOH or WHO NEEDS EXPERTS?

At the heart of the two weekly portions, Vaera, for this Shabbat, and Bo, for the next Shabbat, lies the story of the Ten Plagues God visited upon the Egyptians for Pharaoh’s refusal to free his Israelite slaves. The how, what and why of the Ten Plagues have often captured the imagination of readers and interpreters of the Bible.

Yet, no matter how fascinating the plagues may be, Pharaoh’s response to them appears even more intriguing. The King of Egypt’s unbending dedication to his policy of enslaving the Israelites in the face of a continuing series of disasters begs the question, “What is wrong with Pharaoh?”

Why did Pharaoh fail understand what was happening around him? Why could he not see the results of his policy of continuing to enslave the Israelites? Why is it, that he rejected the opinions of his experts — his sages and magicians — who told him that God’s will was irresistible? What was amiss with the Pharaoh, that in the face of overwhelming evidence, he mulishly held on to what was clearly a disastrous policy?

The biblical answer that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is really no answer at all. It is merely another way of describing Pharaoh’s stubbornness. It is a spiritual reflection on the series of events that led to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Although the relationship between God’s knowledge and human free will is a tricky theological problem, to assume that Pharaoh’s amazing obduracy was solely an expression of God’s unbending will, absolves Pharaoh of responsibility and takes away the tension that propels the narrative forward. Viewing Pharaoh’s choices from a human rather than a divine perspective, however, touches us in deeper ways and presents us with very human challenges. God may have “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart, but Pharaoh let it be hardened.

Even if one assumes that the initial impulse behind the long-standing Egyptian policy to control the Israelites by enslaving them was plausible — that Egypt was in fact threatened by terrorists and foreign invaders, whom the Israelites might support — the Pharaoh’s refusal to see the catastrophic results of following this policy and make the necessary adjustments is striking. Instead of confronting a human army, Pharaoh found himself confronting a divine adversary whose only demand was that Pharaoh should let God’s people go free.

Pharaoh may have been trying to be a good ruler. Leadership does require commitment and consistency. Good leaders do not waffle. They identify problems and create and follow policies to deal with them. They exhibit dedication, steadfastness and clarity of purpose. But good leadership requires something else — the ability to review the situation, reevaluate the response, and, if necessary, change direction. Blind commitment to a failing policy in the face of good contravening evidence, such as that shown by Pharaoh, is foolishness.

Long before the terrible tenth plague, the death of the first born, the Egyptian leadership cadre knew that Pharaoh’s policy was failing and had so informed their king. A review of this material underscores the danger of an unbending, obstinate, ideologically committed national leaders who cannot, will not and does not respond to the changing facts on the ground.

By the time of the third plague, the plague of lice, the Egyptian experts, Pharaoh’s wise men and magicians, understood that their government’s policy was doomed. Unlike the previous two plagues of blood and frogs, which the Egyptian magicians were able to reproduce, they knew that this plague, the lice, was beyond their power and clearly a sign of God’s strength. “This,” they declared, “is the finger of God!” (Exodus 8:15)

Pharaoh rejected their analysis and continued to oppress the Israelites. Yet, shortly thereafter, even Pharaoh thought that it might be worthwhile to study the unfolding events more carefully. During the fifth plague, the devastating plague that afflicted the Egyptian’s but not the Israelites livestock, Pharaoh sent out a team of investigators. Apparently, however, he ignored their report and continued to enslave our ancestors. (Exodus 9:7)

The ever-increasing awareness of the Egyptian leadership that something was amiss did not affect Pharaoh. He did not take into account that even his experts suffered from the deleterious effects of the sixth plague, boils. (Exodus 9:11) The fact that those of his courtiers who had listened to Moses and brought their slaves and livestock inside during the seventh plague, hail, suffered no loss, while the rest of Egypt suffered also made no impression on Pharaoh. (Exodus 9:20)

By the time Moses announces the eighth plague, locusts, the Pharaoh’s advisors realize that their government’s policy is bankrupt. “How long shall this one (Moses) be a snare to us?” they argued before Pharaoh. “Let the men go to worship the Lord (here they use the Tetragrammaton), their God! Are you aware that Egypt is lost?” (Exodus 10:7)

Apparently, Pharaoh was not aware of Egypt's danger. He tried to buy off Moses with only partial concessions, which Moses rejected. The struggle continued and God afflicted the Egyptians with two more plagues. Finally. Pharaoh relented only after the tenth plague, the death of the first born, and let the Israelites leave Egypt. However, even the tenth plague did not deter Pharaoh for long.. Given the chance, he tried to secure his legacy as a strong Pharaoh and redeem his policy of oppression by sending his army against the fleeing Israelites, only to see it destroyed by the waters of the Yam Suf.

The pigheadedness of Pharaoh still confounds us. It remains impossible to explain how the leader of the then most-powerful nation of the world, could, in spite of all evidence and in the face of well-reasoned advice of his experts, persist in his misguided policies. Sadly, Pharaoh is not the only world-leader to have fallen into the trap of persisting in a policy long after it was clear that it would only lead to failure. Part of the power of the Exodus story rests in the fact that Pharaoh appears as the paradigmatic, obstinate ruler whose style of leadership persists through out human history.

STANDING BEFORE PHARAOH

Sermon – February 2, 1990

Temple B’nai Abraham

Livingston, New Jersey 07039

“Go down Moses, down into Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My People Go.’“ So begins one of the best known and best loved hymns composed and sung by African-Americans while they lay enchained in slavery only a handful of generations ago.

“Go down Moses, down into Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My People Go.’“ So commanded the Eternal One, the God of Israel, Moses, when he took Moses from before the flocks of Jethro, the Midianite Priest, to make him the shepherd of Israel.

“Go down Moses, down into Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My People Go.’“ So speaks the commanding voice in the hearts of all those who hear the cries of oppressed people in all lands and in all times.

The Torah – our people’s precious inheritance of moral, spiritual, and ritual directives – relates tales of human response to God’s seemingly unachievable, impossible demands.

God called upon Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, and he was ready to do so.

God called upon Jeremiah to preach against his spiritual center, the Holy Temple in ancient Jerusalem, and he stood up and did so.

The godly power of love called upon Ruth to leave her homeland to accompany her mother-in-law Naomi back to Judah, and she rose up and did so.

The voice of God commands and we respond. We change the course of our lives, we bear witness to our convictions, we make difficult personal choices, we stand ready to act.

But some commands, seem beyond our powers.

“Go down Moses...”

So commanded the Eternal One, God of Israel, Moses, when he took Moses from before the flocks of Jethro, the Midianite Priest, to make him the shepherd of Israel. “Go before Pharaoh and say, “Thus says the Eternal One, the God of Israel, ‘Let My people go.’“

It is the wisdom of the Torah and the wisdom of our people that while it is difficult to know where God is to be found, if we want to go looking for the Holy One in order to respond to his voice, we will find God standing in the midst of the oppressed. The pale light Moses saw in the burning bush in the middle of the wilderness became the radiant pillar of fire in the midst of the camp of Israel as the slaves fled Egypt.

“Go down Moses” commanded God to Moses, “and in your struggles for the liberation of my people, my power will be revealed, my glory displayed for I have seen the affliction of my people and I have heard their outcry.”

And Moses responded, “Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth Israel out of Egyptian bondage?”

Moses demurred but God answered that he will be with Moses and Moses would work wonders.

“Go down Moses!” Are we aware of the depth of this command that begins our history as a nation? Do we feel Moses’ fear and courage as he responded to the order? Do we understand the risk Moses was told to take? Do we know that he risked his life for the dream of freedom? Do we know what it is to come before Pharaoh and demand freedom?

Not so long ago, Eli Wiesel stood before then President Reagan when the president was planning a visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany where S.S. troops lay buried. When he started to talk, as we were so proud to hear, Eli Wiesel “spoke truth to power.” With the courage of the prophets, he told the Mr. Reagan that the president of the United States should not go to Bitburg, that his place was to stand at the graves of the victims and not before the tombs of the oppressors.

But Moses needed more than the measure of the courage granted to the prophets, for he was to address a power more frightful than that of ignorance and lack of insight. He was to come before Pharaoh. He was to stand before the oppressor himself. Our people’s story begins with the command to go before Pharaoh and demand freedom and it is a story that has been retold throughout our history and history of all peoples. And the story never grows old.

“Go down Moses, down into Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My People Go.’“ Is the story of our lifetimes.

It is the story of our late rabbi, Dr. Joachim Prinz, preaching in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and it is the story of the birth of the State of Israel.

It is the story of Rosa Parkes who stayed in her seat in the whites-only section of the bus and it is the story of those who marched for the equality of all Americans, black and white, Jew and Gentile.

It is the story of the people of Leipzig and Bucharest and it is the story of the students of Tianimin Square.

It is the story being re-told and replayed as we are sitting here.

It is our story. In each generation we are told “stand before Pharaoh and demand freedom.” In each generation, we are reminded that God’s glory is revealed not to the mighty but to the downtrodden. We learn again that to stand with God is to stand with the oppressed.

God sends us to Pharaoh to demand freedom. We hear the command and throughout the world, people respond. They stand before today’s Pharaoh’s, the bureaucratic despots of Eastern Europe, the strong-men and dictators of Latin America, and the autocrats of the China, and demand freedom.

We see miracles and we see tragedy. We see a modern miracle, a mighty empire shaking, a despotic regime transforming itself. Though we see it on the evening news and read about it in the morning paper, it is no less a miracle than our ancient adventure remembered in the poetry of the Biblical epic.

And we see tragedy, fighting in the cities of Rumania, bloodshed into the heart of Peking. We are reminded that to demand freedom is to risk everything and that not all struggles for liberation succeed.

“Go down Moses, go down to Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My people go!’“

Where do we stand, we, who are blessed to live in a land of freedom and we, who watch the mighty deeds of our time on T.V.?

How can we go down to Egypt?
What can we tell Pharaoh?
How can we demand freedom?

As Americans our national presence needs to be with those seeking liberation and our collective voice must join with those crying for freedom.

We, as a nation that found its model for freedom in the struggles of ancient Israel, need to comfort the slaughtered students of Tiananmen Square and not console the butchers of Beijing.

We need to know that the breakup of Berlin wall can be the first step in the integration of the newly freed nations of Eastern Europe into the family of free peoples rather than opportunity to turn a quick buck.

We, as Americans, can be the midwives of freedom. We can reduce the pain and guide the process.

We whose land was torn by two mighty conflicts and many smaller struggles to secure the liberty of all our citizens can serve as guides and as teachers.

We need to remember that ultimately our security lies not in our military might but in our ability to ensure that blessings of freedom are shared by all throughout the world. As Jews, we who first told the story, must continue to retell it.

We need to remind all who are seeking freedom that the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land is long and arduous.

We need to warn them of the attraction of Egypt’s fleshpots and tell them how easy it is to exchange one oppressor for another.

And we need to remember that our commitment to freedom and liberation cannot be bought by the gifts and promises of today’s Pharaohs.

As Jews, we have a special responsibility. Our people, so long oppressed under Soviet rule, are beginning to feel freedom’s warmth. As a small people, we have always attempted to express our universal concern for all peoples by caring for our people. So today, we are called upon to aid our Jewish brothers and sisters who are seeking to build new lives in the diaspora and in Eretz Yisrael. They need our financial help and personal guidance as they find their places in new lands.

We are also called to aid those Jews who are seeking to rebuild Jewish life in Soviet Union and Rumania and in other newly liberated lands. In Europe, history teaches us that Jewish freedom has been the litmus test for general freedom. The ability of a society to tolerate diversity has been marked by its openness to Jews. In those lands and in those times when our people were free, the blessing of freedom were shared by all.

“Go down Moses, down into Egypt-land and tell old Pharaoh, `Let My People Go.’“ So begins this week’s Torah portion, “And the Eternal One said to Moses, `Go in unto Pharaoh...’“

Go in unto Pharaoh

and demand freedom!
Demand liberation!
Demand equality!
Demand equity!
Demand human rights!
Demand justice!
Demand peace!

Stand before Pharaoh and risk everything for I, the Eternal One, the God of Israel, will be with you and “you will be able to tell your children and to you children’s children about all the wonders that I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them, that you might know I am the Eternal One.”

The Torah teaches us that the entire world witnessed the revelation of God’s glory, power and might when Moses led our people to freedom. All humanity saw that the struggle for freedom was an expression of God’s will and that tyranny and domination of any kind was an expression of human rebelliousness.

Today, we, too, are witnesses to the expression of the divine will in human history. May we be so blessed to see its expression in our lifetimes and may we be so honored that we can foster its progress through words and deeds of peace.

Amen.

B’shallach Exodus 13:17 - 17:16

THE STORY OF THE EXODUS: NOT HOW- BUT WHY
April 23, 2003

Then I will stiffen Pharaoh’s heart and her will pursue them,

that I may gain glory through Pharaoh and all his host;

and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD. Exodus 14:4

The Torah pictures the Exodus as God’s show. The hero of the Exodus story is God and God’s deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian bondage proves God’s superiority over the all the gods of Egypt including Egypt’s God-King, the Pharaoh.

By picturing the Exodus story as the story of God’s triumph over our oppressors and their false God’s rather than taking about it in human terms as the conflict between Moses and Pharaoh or between the Hebrew slaves and their Egyptian slave masters, the Torah guides our consideration of the Exodus story.

Although we might be interested in understanding the story from the human perspective, the Torah does not give us even the basic information we would need to analyze the story from an historical point of view. We do not even know the names of the Pharaohs who persecuted our ancestors and resisted Moses’ demands to set our people free.

It is as if the Torah’s authors did not want us to study the Exodus as an event in human history. We are unable to explain the story from an archaeological or sociological or economic point of view. The basic facts are just not there. All the Torah tells us is that God set our people free and the mechanics of God’s activities do not have to be explained in human terms. We do not have to explain how the Exodus happened but the Torah wants us to consider why we were redeemed. The Torah wants us to consider the meaning of the Exodus for us and for our descendants.

The Torah directs us to consider the moral, ethical and spiritual implications of being delivered from Egyptian bondage. Over and over again the Torah uses our people’s experience in Egypt as a motivating factor behind the laws and customs of Jewish life. We are to treat the stranger kindly because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. We are to pursue holiness because the LORD brought us out of Egypt to be holy. We are to be loyal to God because God saved us from Egyptian bondage.

The “why” question of the Exodus experience rather than the “how” question is underscored in the Prophetic literature. The prophet Amos remind us that there is nothing strange in the migrations of people. God directs the movements of all nations. What makes the Exodus significant for Amos, is not the God guided us out of Egypt but how we respond to that event. What does it mean to us.

In the Haggadah, we are asked to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt as if we were one of the redeemed. During the Pesach seder we do not retell the story of the Exodus but tell its meaning to us. We are not to pretend that we were witnesses of the event so many years ago but we are to bear witness of its significance for us today.

Although the Torah’s presentation of the Exodus story as God’s story may grate against our humanistic impulses, its presentation forces us ultimately to consider the most important human question -- what do the events of our lives mean to us. The question to us as Jews is not how we survived but what meaning and purpose do we discover in our survival or in more God centered terms not how did God save us but why did God save us, for what purpose, for what goal.

THE LAST PERSON TO CROSS THE SEA

January 18, 2019

As dramatic and powerful as it may be, the Torah narrative is very sparse and tightly written. So much information is missing – details, people, feelings, and motivations. Inquisitive minds want to know, but the Torah text is not speaking. What to do?

Gaps in the text invite creativity. The rabbis of the Talmudic period characteristically used an inventive, imaginative process known as midrash to provide us with much of this missing information. In doing so, they encouraged us to look at our sacred stories in new and innovative ways.

Perhaps, one the best known rabbinic midrashic addition to the story of the crossing of the Red Sea, the central event in Parashat Beshallach, is the legend of Nachshon ben Amminadav, a young man from the tribe of Judah, who, according to the midrash was the first to enter in water just after Moses lifted his staff to split the sea.[1] Someone had to go first and when Nachshon saw that his fellow Israelites were reluctant to go forward, Nachshon boldly jumped ahead and only after he entered the water, did the sea split and the Israelite cross.

In the Jewish tradition, Nachshon has become a model of the bold leader and person of faith. In their short account of Nachshon’s bravery, the Talmudic sages encourage us to reflect on the nature of leadership and the meaning of trusting one’s values and vision. Yet Nachson’s story is not the only possible story of courage, trust and hope we can tell.

By shifting our attention from the first person to enter the Red Sea to the last, we can consider courage, conviction and commitment from a new perspective. Let us not think of Nachshon who led the way, but of the unknown Israelite woman or man who was at the very end. New questions arise: Why was she there? What was it like being at there with only a pillar of cloud, perhaps, separating her and all those she loved from the pursuing Egyptian army? What was her task? Where did she find the strength to go forward? What does she have to teach us?

How did she end way back there? Perhaps she was part of a bold group of Israelites who volunteered to be the rear-guard and protect the people from impending disaster. As we can imagine God not splitting the sea until someone had the faith, trust and courage to go first, we can also imagine God not positioning the protecting pillar of smoke and fire at the end of the procession until brave Israelites were willing be place their bodies there first.

Perhaps she was weak and infirm and could only move slowly – struggling with all her strength just to keep up – while the younger, stronger, healthier Israelites sadly rushed ahead and did not offer needed assistance the to the very young, very old and very sick. In this retelling, God becomes her protector and the rest of us are reminded that it is a holy and sacred task to care for those less fortunate than ourselves.

Perhaps, she chose to be there to make guarantee that no one was left behind. She made sure that the sheep and goats did not wander away and the children and the grandparents were keeping up. She was a caring and comforting presence in the face of danger and the divine presence in the form of a pillar of smoke and fire came to help her.

Perhaps she was there as an act of defiance – to look Pharaoh straight in the eye – to laugh in his face – to rebuke him for the pain and suffering he brought upon her and her family. She needed to confront the one who slaughtered her child, who worked her brother to death, who beat her father, who disgraced her mother. She was no longer concerned with her own survival but she would do whatever she could to stop oppression.

We do not know who was that last to enter the Red Sea and the last to cross. Neither the Torah nor the Rabbinic tradition suggest a name or even consider the question. But someone always is first and someone always is last and it takes a special kind of courage to stand at either end of the line. One needs guts to go first and hope others will follow. One also needs guts to be last, knowing there is no one else to complete the task. We need brave people at both ends of the line because their courage and strength keep us together, give us hope and push us forward.

[1] The Book of Legends, Sefer Ha-Aggadah, The Splitting of the Red Sea and the Plunder at The Sea §82, citing: B. Sot 36b-37a; Mek, Be-shallah, Va-yehi, 6 (La 1:233-35).

"BEYOND ALL SONGS"

Temple B'nai Abraham

Livingston, NJ 07039

The stark Aramaic words of the traditional Jewish doxology, the Qaddish, the prayer in which we proclaim the utter greatness and glory of God, describe God as "the one who is far beyond all the blessings, songs, hymns and adorations which are expressed in the world."

The statement that God is beyond all blessings, songs, hymns and adorations is two-sided. On the one hand, it declares the utter greatness of God. Not only is God beyond description, God is beyond song and praise.

One the other hand, it tells us that song and poetry are the highest forms of human expression. Not only is it the case that our mind, our intellectual facility, is incapable of capturing the reality of God through words, even our heart, our emotive capacity, is unable to express the experience of God, through dance and song, through prayer and art.

In the Qaddish prayer, which had its origins as the closing prayer of the school session in early rabbinic times, lectures and and discussions, seminars and sermons are not even considered to be appropriate means of approaching the greatness of God. The words of the Qaddish do not extol God as the one beyond all sermons and lectures, thesis and treatises. Rather, the prayer praises God as the one beyond all songs, hymns and adorations.

Even for the book-bound, textually trained rabbinic scholars and school-masters who were the authors of the Qaddish, our most powerful faculty was our ability to sing, to compose poetry to write hymns, to be creative, that is our ability to be artists

In the moving and equally ancient prayer from the traditional Shabbat and festival morning service, the Nishmat, the anonymous author describes all of creation praising and blessing God. Though he, too, believes that we are incapable of adequately praising God, this poet understands song as our strongest medium for spiritual expression.

If our mouths were filled with song,

As water fills the sea,

And out tongues rang with your praise,

As tirelessly as the roaring waves;,

If our lips offered adoration,

As boundless as the sky,

And our eyes shone in reverence,

As brightly as the sun,

If our hands were spread in prayer

As wide as eagles' wings,

And our feet ran to serve You,

As swiftly as the deer;

We would still be unable to thank You adequately

In spite of our inadequacy; the prayer declares that asserts that we will never stop singing. The poet declares "in the assembled multitudes of the house of Israel, God will be glorified in song as our sovereign in every generation." And he concludes his prayer with the affirmation that our God and Sovereign who is the life of the universe, "delights in our songs of praise.",

Music has a special power. Singing together creates a forceful feeling of solidarity even in a group of strangers. A song can provide courage when we is frightened and companionship when we is alone. Music can evoke precious memories and inspire great ideas

Music is timeless. The old songs from our youth are nostalgic, the golden oldies. Our old cloths, on the other hand, are out of style and old rags. As couples, many of us have our own special songs. Music can stir a people into action and create a feeling of peace.

For many of us, music has been part of our deepest spiritual experiences, not restricted to the synagogue but in places as diverse as the lawn at Tanglewood, the beach at Cap May, a campsite in the woods, and the Seder table,

With music we address our souls. We open ourselves to thoughts and feelings more intense than we could imagine. Through song, we can discover the divine spark within us. Through song we can achieve a deeper sense of our full humanity.

People who sing and who teach others to sing are precious. ny societies give special honor to their bards and poets, songsters and musicians. The ability to create music and share that music with others is a rare gift, a cherished talent.

Our tradition bestows a special honor on three biblical personalities who involved themselves with music and song. It describes them as prophets, which are as people who mediate God's word, people who form the bridge between God and humanity. These people are King David, the "sweet singer of Israel," the Judge Deborah and Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses.

Yet their prophetic mission is different than the mission of the other prophets in the Bible. They are not miracle workers like the prophets Elijah or Elisha. They do not cure the sick nor produce food for the hungry. They do not speak with the voice of moral indignation at the faults of a sinning Israel as do the great literary prophets, Amos and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

They are musicians. They sing the praises of God and they taught others to extol the Eternal in song.

Tomorrow morning, we read as part of the Torah and Haftara portions the two oldest surviving pieces of Hebrew poetry, the "Song of Deborah" and the "Song of the Sea." It is from these readings that this Shabbat takes its name as Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of Song.

It is in these early pieces of Hebrew poetic composition that we clearly hear the voices of early Israelite women. Deborah offering a poetic tribute to the God who delivered her people from the Canaanite oppressors and Miriam who lead the women of Israel in song and dance after their rescue from the advancing Egyptian hosts at the shore of the Red Sea.

Miriam led the first sisterhood of Israel as they praised and extolled Israel's God who showed himself to be master of creation and protector and redeemer of Israel.

The wonders the Miriam and Deborah created, the miracles that they performed did not involve changing nature but changing the souls of men and women. They are called prophets because through their creative ability the people of Israel were able to see God working through Israel's history.

By the way they captured and preserved the historical experience of the flight of slaves from Egypt and the defeat of a Canaanite king’s general by a rabble of farmers and shepherds, they charged these events with cosmic significance. Miriam's song is a song of praising the liberating God and Deborah's hymn is a hymn of praise for Israel's savior.

Through their singing, dancing and rejoicing, Miriam and the sisterhood of Israel brought a new sense of coherence to the liberated slaves. They produced the first national anthem. They fostered the first sense of national identity. Even before the nation-forming event of the Sinai revelation, Miriam and her women gave Israel a sense of national purpose and shared experience by casting the events at the shore of the Red Sea into meter and verse.

Likewise, Deborah used her song celebrating the defeat of Israel's oppressors to strengthen the sense of unity among the twelve tribes. In her poetic imagination, Israel was saved by God's mighty hand, but in her political wisdom, she knew that freedom could only be preserved through Israelite unity.,

These earliest songs are songs of victory, praising God, the savior of Israel

Yet, these songs for all their warlike imagery, are more that battle songs. They are songs that direct our thoughts and feelings to an image of God as the exalted mighty one.

The Song of the Sea rhetorically asks

Who is like you Dear God among the Godlings,

Who is like you in majesty and in holiness,

Awesome in splendor, working wonders.

Deborah's song describes the mountains quaking before the coming of the Lord, the God of Israel, the One of Sinai.

Our history and liturgy is fully aware of the need to praise God in song and of the sense that any song we sing is inadequate to the task.

One of the Psalms in the series of psalms chanted in more traditional synagogues for Qabbalat Shabbat opens with the exhortation,

"Sing a New Song to the Eternal One."

Yet, that series of psalms praising God as creator of the universe, end with the Qaddish that reminds us that the Eternal is the one beyond all songs and praises. It is this dichotomy that we celebrate tonight. We reach forth in song to touch the one who is beyond all songs. We celebrate the attempt to praise the one beyond praise. We hope that like the Prophet Miriam and like the Prophet Deborah, our attempts to transform the events of our lives into songs of praise and triumph be equally inspired so that in some small sense we can share their prophetic vision. As we sing we become more human and the more human we become the better we can sing of God.

The Price of Doubt

Amalek – Shabbat Zakor

February 21, 1988

The conflicting commands to both “Remember what Amalek did to you by the way as you came forth out of Egypt (Deut. 25:17)” and “Do not forget to blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens (Deut. 25:19),” present many problems to the reader.

Put simply, the basic question is how does one remember to forget? To answer it, we need to seek out what positive goal we may accomplish by attempting to fulfill this peculiar mitzvah.

Often, modern interpreters claim that the mitzvah is two-fold. Understanding “the memory of Amalek” as a concept, “Amalekitism” or “wanton cruelty”, they read the mitzvah as saying, “Do not forget what Amalek did to you, so that you will never forget to blot out Amalekitism.”

Although the nation Amalek no longer exists, there are still many nations and individuals that practice senseless and wanton cruelty. As victims of such cruelty, we, Jews, should be particularly interested in the elimination of Amalekitism throughout the world.

In the Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, a collection of ancient Jewish sermons from the 5th century, we see another approach. In the Peskita on Shabbat Zakor, we read the following midrash:

“Remember what Amalek did to you as you came forth out of Egypt” (Deut. 25:17). Rabbi Levi said, “Amalek came upon you from the wayside like a highwayman.” He offered a parable: “Once there was a king who had a vineyard which he had enclosed with a fence. In it he put a dog that was known to bite. The king said, ‘If anyone should come and breach the fence, the dog will bite him. When the king’s own son came and breached the fence, the dog bit him.’ Thereupon, whenever the king wished to remind his son of his sin, that is what he did in the vineyard, the king would say to him, ‘Remember how the dog bit you.’”

So then, whenever the Holy One wished to remind Israel of their sin at Rephidim which was asking, “Is Adonai among us, or not?” (Exod. 17:7), God would say to them, “Remember what Amalek did to you (Deut. 25:17).” Pesikta De-Rab Kahana Piska 3.9

The moral here is, “do not lose faith in God and in your journey. To do so is a sin.” Albeit the Amalekites were cruel and their attack was unexpected, but, the midrash does not focus on what the Amalekites did, but on our ancestors self–inflicted vulnerability – their doubts.

This midrash is based on the biblical narrative. Just prior to the War with Amalekites, the Israelites were encamped in a place known as Rephidim where they do not find any water to drink. Our ancestors complained to Moses who in despair turned to the Eternal for advice. God told Moses to take his staff and in the presence of the elders and all the people, to strike a rock. Moses did so and water came out. Because of this, the Torah says, “And the name of the place was Massah and Merivah because the Israelites complained and tested Adonai by doubting that God was with them. (Exodus 17:1-7) Since the attack of the Amalekites immediately follows this story, (Exodus 17:8-16) the author of the midrash ties the two events together. The Amalekite attack was punishment for the Israelites lack of faith.

The inability of the Israelites to recognize that the divine presence was among them so soon after the great events of the Exodus was seen by the Biblical and Rabbinic tradition as a great sin. Not only was their lack of faith in God and in themselves the reason that they were attacked by the Amalekites, but, as the Psalmist tells us, that it also was the reason that they were not allowed to enter into the land of Israel (Ps. 95:10-11).

Thus this midrash refocus the directive “never forget to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek”. We are not to concentrate on our troubles but to remember that our strength is in our faith in our values, our traditions and ourselves. It is when we succumb to our doubts that we are vulnerable and out enemies will bite us. To remember what Amalek did to us is the memory that even though Israel is God’s beloved child, Israel is not exempt for the laws that govern all of God’s domains. When Israel loses faith, Israel, too, will be bitten.

FAITH AND DOUBT

I have come to understand that for spiritually mature people, faith and doubt are inextricably bound together. For such people, faith and doubt are normal, recurring and necessary points on the continuous cycle of their spiritual lives. These people know that the depth of their faith is constantly in flux in response to the changing circumstances of their lives. They are aware that their spiritual lives are dynamic, not static. They understand that there will be moments of ecstasy and moments of despair and many other moments in between. They have learned that they have to celebrate life’s high points, honor life’s low points, and express a grand sense of awe and wonder at the entire process.

It is impossible for us constantly to keep our faith — our belief in life’s goodness and our sense of thankfulness for our blessings — at the same level. Just when things seem so clear, life always manages to throw us a curve ball. Even at its best, life is difficult. Nothing comes easy. It is hard to grow up. It is hard to grow old. We have to work to keep our jobs, to maintain our relationships.

Every success is followed by new challenges. We have to return to our regular lives after every vacation. Every weekend is followed by Monday. It is not surprising that we chant havdalah, the prayers that mark the end of Shabbat, in a sad melody. We would be denying the reality of life if we did not let our spiritual lives follow the cycles of life.

Life is full of problems, from the simple ones of trying to find time to do everything necessary for our jobs, our families, our friends and our community, to the harder ones of dealing with issues of personal loss and family tragedy, and on to the universal ones of human poverty, political oppression and environmental decline. It takes a real effort not to get discouraged, become depressed and lose one’s faith.

Yet somehow we manage to go on and discover moments, places and people who fill us with such surprising delight, that, at least of a while, everything seems clear and beautiful and our doubts subside. But then the cycle begins again. Until I realized how very human this cycle of faith and doubt is, I often found it hard to understand the attitude of our ancestors, who lost faith at every setback, even though they had experienced the wondrous Exodus from Egypt and the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. In this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, immediately after we read about the Israelites’ joyous celebration following the Red Sea crossing, we come to a series of stories describing their discontent with life in the wilderness. How could they so quickly lose their faith?

But the truth is that in the desert there was not enough to drink or eat. Our ancestors, who just a few months before had been slaves in the rich and fertile Nile valley, were now free men and women in the dry and barren wilderness. It is not so hard to imagine the despair of a woman struggling to find water for her thirsty children as the family wandered from one small oasis to the next. It is not difficult to comprehend the doubts of a man watching his elderly parents struggling along with insufficient food.

Our ancestors were people who had only begun their journey into both faith and freedom. When they were slaves in Egypt, both God and liberty seemed distant. Moses’ return from exile in Midian awakened in their hearts dreams and beliefs deeply buried by centuries of oppression.

Over the last year their lives had been radically dislocated. They had been stirred by new hopes for liberation that were immediately followed by increased oppression. They had seen their world turned upside down by unbelievable miracles, only to have their very real hopes shattered time and time again by Pharaoh’s hardheartedness. At the very moment of freedom, they barely escaped destruction by Egypt’s army and crossed the sea only to see their pursuers destroyed. I doubt that I would feel different or behave differently if I were with them.

But things change and miracles happen — bitter waters were made sweet (Exodus 15:22-25), the wondrous food, manna, fell from heaven (Exodus 16:1-35) and at the moment of deepest doubt, water spurted from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7).
With faith and hope renewed, our ancestors journeyed to Sinai, where the cycle of faith and doubt began anew.

As we mature as individuals and as a community, we begin to understand that life is in a constant state of flux. We learn that there are good times and bad times and we develop the wisdom and insight to live through and grow from both. The Book of Exodus records our people’s earliest encounter with faith and freedom and their struggles to understand the meaning of both. Those were difficult times, but we should not judge our ancestors too harshly. The lessons we have learned from their experiences have given us the insight and power to remain spiritually strong through periods of unbelievable triumphs and unbearable defeats. Their stories have taught us to be open to the wondrous experience of life, to understand that there will be times of darkness, and to believe that miracles do happen. Spiritually, we have grown.

MANNA – ONLY RENEWED WHEN CONSUMED

Devar Torah Annual Meeting - Temple B'nai Abraham

January 15, 1989

Shabbat BeShalach/Shirah

It is one of the beauties of the Torah, that one can see the deepest teachings of our long-lived tradition in a single word, a simple sentence, a short passage. We see that Jewish life is very much an interconnected web of knowledge, insight, experience, and tradition. We learn that one knot in this webbing informs and is informed by all other knots.

In this week’s Torah portion, we read of God’s first gift to the Jewish people after they left the land of Egypt. It was the gift of the manna, the mystical, magical food, that sustained them throughout the forty years of the Desert Wandering.

The instructions concerning the manna were simple and clear. Each Israelite was allowed one measure, one omer, of manna to eat each day. They were to collect the manna in the morning and they were to eat it all before the dawn of the next day. They were forbidden to keep any of it over until the following morning because to do so would have shown a lack of trust in God.

The manna, apparently, had a short shelf life. Some Israelites tried to store the manna over night, but when they rose the next morning they found that it had already gone bad.

Only on Friday were the Israelites permitted to gather more than one day’s measure of manna. Since the next day was the holy Sabbath, on which they were not permitted to collect the manna, God allowed them to collect food for both Friday and for the Sabbath, the day of rest.

The Book of Exodus reports that God commanded Moses and Aaron to collect a small amount of manna and place it in a jar. They were told to place the jar in the ark were it was to be a reminder of God’s protecting love for his people during the wilderness experience.

This brief and apparently simple description of the manna, serves the sophisticated literary function of binding the Desert Wandering to the other great events of the Torah narrative, to Eden, to the Exodus, to Sinai, and to the Conquest of the Land of Israel.

To Eden: As God provided food for Eve and Adam in Eden, so God provided food for our Israelite ancestors in the Wilderness.

To the Exodus: As none of the Passover sacrifice was to remain left over for the next morning, so all the manna collected on one day could not be left uneaten until the next

To Sinai: As the Tablets were placed in the Ark as a perpetual testimony to God’s covenant, the manna was placed in the same Ark as a perpetual testimony to God’s grace.

To the Conquest: As the manna was the substance and symbol of God’s protecting care of the people Israel during the forty years in the Wilderness, the land of Israel and its produce would be the substance and symbol of God’s continuing care for Israel throughout the generations.

More important to us today is the insight of the Rabbis of the Talmudic period that “the manna tasted different to everyone. Whatever a person liked, he or she found in the manna” [Shimoni I:258]. The rabbis teach us that all the Israelites received the same material to eat, that is, the manna, but the manna tasted different to each one. Every Jew experienced and enjoyed the manna in his or her own unique way.

It is through insights such as this that we can begin to understand the complex issue of unity and diversity in Jewish history and in Jewish life. We learn that we are united as heirs to the same Jewish tradition. All Jews share a common history and a common fate. We also learn that each one of us experiences our Judaism differently. Each one of us has his or her unique

contribution to make to our tradition.

Like our ancestors in the desert who were given the life-sustaining food called manna, we receive the life-giving gift of our sacred tradition. As they were able to prepare it any way they desired, we are permitted to use our tradition in ways that will enhance our lives. As the manna tasted different to each of our Israelite ancestors, we all experience our Judaism in our unique ways.

The greatest miracle and the most powerful comparison is that Judaism, like the manna can neither be stored nor saved. Only when we consume it, will it be restored for us. If for whatever reason we attempt to put it away, to save it up, to store it for some possible future need, our Judaism will, like the manna of old, spoil and decay.

Synagogues exist for the purpose of helping Jews live out their Jewish lives. Synagogues are not museums exhibiting precious object far too rare and too fragile to be taken out and used. Synagogues are not zoos, where visitors come and observe unusual species live out their unusual lives.

Synagogues are institutions where Jews can come together to be Jewish. They are places in which Jews can use and replenish their precious gift, the life-giving and life-staining, manna-like traditions of the People Israel.

We are here this morning to renew our commitment that our synagogue, Temple B’nai Abraham, remain such an institution, a place in which Torah is taught and Judaism is practiced, a place in which the best in our tradition is constantly consumed and renewed through our involvement with Judaism.

Yitro: Exodus 18.1 - 20.23

THE TEN STATEMENTS

February 14, 2009

Our current use of the expression “The Ten Commandments” to refer to the words inscribed on the two tablets Moses brought down from Sinai does not come to us from the Jewish tradition. We have taken the phrase from the greater Christian culture in which we live. Although contemporary Jews use the term “The Ten Commandments” for convenience, we should remember that as a religious expression, it is not a neutral term. It is embedded in a theological system that shares much with the Jewish tradition, yet separates from it in significant ways. As Jews, we would serve ourselves better if we used the Greek derived name “Decalogue” or the Rabbinic Hebrew term Aseret ha-Dibrot, both meaning “the ten statements.”

In the Jewish tradition, the Torah is an expression of God’s love. Spiritual reflections on the revelation of the Torah described in the weekly reading “Yitro” picture these events as a mystical meeting between God and Israel. The Torah, including all its rules, regulations, laws and commandments, appears as the loving gift of a loving God to God’s beloved people. These rules, regulations, maxims and principles form the covenant that binds us, as Jews, to each other and to God. Traditionally, we find 613 mitzvot, “commandments”, within the written Torah and we know that there are countless more, as we have built a way of life grounded on all these principles. As Jews, we see the multiplicity of commandments as a sign of God’s abundant love and concern for us. Torah and Mitzvot, “Law and Commandments”, are treasured words.

In this light the Biblical Hebrew term from this passage — Aseret HaDevarim — or its Rabbinic Hebrew equivalent — Aseret HaDibrot — “The Decalogue” or “The Ten Statements,” is more precise. Jewish life comprises far more than these ten phrases.

But if these ten statements are not commandments, what are they? They seem to be broad principles. The Decalogue does not provide any specifics. It does not explain how to observe the Shabbat or how to honor one’s parents. The statement against adultery implies the institution of marriage but marriage is not defined. The warning not to take God’s name in vain suggests that there is a tradition of making oaths and vows but again the essential details are lacking. The opening statement — I am the Eternal your God who took you out of the Land of Egypt to be your God — is a theological assertion and the last statement, the admonition not to covet, addresses an emotional state and not an action.

The Decalogue itself appears twice in the Torah, here in Exodus 20 and later in Deuteronomy 5, with only slight variations. In Exodus the Decalogue is followed by a large collection of laws and regulations. In Deuteronomy, it is followed by a lengthy discourse describing the relationship between God and Israel. Therefore, it is probably best to see the Decalogue as the outline or the abstract of the Torah. These ten statements alert us to many of the major concerns of ethical, ritual and legal teachings of the Torah and by extension, the Jewish spiritual tradition. As we read and discuss the Torah in the weeks to come, we will touch on these themes over and over again.

The Decalogue and especially the two tablets on which they are written remain beloved symbols of Jewish life. They form the insignia for Jewish chaplains in the US Armed Forces. We display them proudly in our synagogues. They remind us of our covenantal commitments to each other and to God. The words inscribed on the tablets, the Aseret HaDibrot, the ten expressions, are not the fullness of Jewish spiritual life and ethical insight. They are the words that introduce us to the mitzvot. They remind us that there is more to come and we respond to them by exploring the richness of our tradition in our studies and in our lives.

AN ALTAR OF EARTH OR UNHEWN STONES

How does one come close to God and how does God come close to us? This question underlies the narrative structure the story of the revelation of the Decalogue in Parashat Yitro. The account begins with God stating the purpose behind the covenant with Israel. God bore them out of Egypt on “eagle’s wings” and brought them to Mount Sinai to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Israel and God are to become close, bound together with a set of promises and obligations. (Exodus 19:4-6) Yet, when God decides to meet this people, descending in a cloud upon the mountain, God warns them off. (Exodus 19:10-15)

God’s presence can be overwhelming. Despite the elaborate ritual purifications, the Israelites needed to avoid coming too close to God. God instructed Moses to set bounds around the mountain and to advise the Israelites that crossing them would incur a death penalty. Touching the mountain was deadly. Even gazing at the Divine presence was perilous. Only Moses had permission to come near.

The mountain was full of smoke and fire. Trumpet blasts warned the people off. Through the thunder and flames God proclaimed the Decalogue and the people trembled with fear and stood back. They had come to meet God and God’s presence pushed them away.

An unapproachable God, no matter how powerful and holy, is of little help. God’s glory evokes awe and fear. Even the majesty of God’s greatest creations fills us with wonder. But we cannot get close to God as the One who defeated Pharaoh, split the sea, and thundered at Sinai. We will be overwhelmed rather than embraced by God’s presence.

In those days as today, a common response to the question of how to approach the awesome God, is to reduce God, to downsize God to the human level, to create physical or verbal images of God that we can control. We build idols, representations of God that we can hold in our hands and keep in our homes. We domesticate God. We make God our pet. We give God treats and God gives us love and protection.

This response seems so natural that the first warning we receive after the Decalogue is a prohibition against making divine images of gold and silver. (Exodus 20:20) It is so comfortable that the first rebellion is the making of the Golden Calf when God and Moses seemed far away. (Exodus 32:1-6) It is so wrong because we have made our powerful God powerless.

Another response would be for God to elevate us. Moses suggested that when the Israelites begged him to be their intermediary. But we can only be elevated so far. Despite our deepest wishes, we are bound by our physical being. We can only rise so high no matter how reverent and good we may be. (Exodus 20:15-18) We are not heavenly beings but earth-bound creatures.

But, the Torah suggests a third response. God and humanity can meet in the middle. God can reduce himself somewhat and, likewise, we can elevate ourselves. After being warned against idolatry, the Torah invites us back into God’s presence – not around a burning mountain, but before a simple altar, a symbolic mountain, made of dirt or unhewn stones with the flickering flames of the fire for roasting the sacrifice.

Much of the Torah deals with the rules and regulations pertaining to the sacrificial worship system of our ancient ancestors. It is easy to get lost in the details. But here, as we bring the story of Sinai to an end and segue into the first legal code in the Torah, we are reminded of the essential nature of worship – our encounter with God. Here we learn the basic lesson – if we assemble the altar peacefully and approach it modestly, it will be the place where heaven and earth touch and God and humanity meet. Or in other terms, true encounters only occur when we are able to control ourselves and not try to change the other.

Mishpatim Exodus 21:1‑24:18

THE GOLDEN RULE

January 29, 2013

The ethical principle of reciprocal love provides the foundation for Jewish life. The great sage Hillel, (traditionally 110 BCE – 10 CE), when challenged to summarize the Torah while standing on one foot declared that the essence of the Torah was the “Golden Rule” – “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary, go and study!” (Shabbat 31a)

There are many ways of expressing the “Golden Rule” but the concept of loving one’s neighbor as oneself (as in Leviticus 19:19), no matter how it is formulated, is easy to say but hard to put into practice. As Hillel indicated, it is lifetime occupation.

One of our greatest difficulties in expressing this great principle in our lives is the problem of separating our feelings from our actions. It is hard to care for people from whom we are emotionally distant. It becomes somewhat easier to do so when we understand that biblically the directive “to love” had a powerful action component.

“Love”, in this sense, refers more to the relationship we wish to cultivate than it does to our personal feelings. It is a “covenantal term.” We are commanded not so much to love as to act in a loving manner. Hopefully, love for our God and our fellow human beings would fill our sense of self-awareness, which our biblical ancestors saw as centered in our hearts (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Leviticus 19:18-19). Until that happens, we are to behave in ways that express loving concern. By manifesting “love” by the way we interact with others in our world, we create the opportunity for the emotional aspects of love to grow within us.

The “Golden Rule” is a central theme in the collection of laws known as the “Covenant Code” found in this week’s Torah portion. These laws, following immediately after the revelation of the Decalogue at Sinai, are the first expression in the Torah of the legal principles and guidelines that were to guide our ancestors as they build a life as a free people in their own land. They dealt with concerns of our people as they built strong and supportive communities and, in later years, formed the foundation for much of Jewish law. They strove to express the principle of reciprocal love in clear and specific ways.

The “Golden Rule” provides the guideline for social justice. Since our experience in Egypt taught us how easy it is to afflict the stranger, the biblical word for those people and communities not fully integrated into the life of the community, we are to protect the strangers among us. (Exodus 23:9) Since our experience in Egypt taught us how simple it is for the powerful to ignore the pleas of the vulnerable and weak when they experience oppression and injustice, we are to respond to their cries of pain and suffering. (Exodus 22:20-23)

However, the “Golden Rule” also applies in our personal interactions. How we feel about other people cannot affect how we relate to them or their property. We need to treat those we hate with the same level of concern as we treat those we love. If we find our enemy’s ox or donkey wandering, we cannot keep them. They must be returned. (Exodus 23:4) If we find donkey of someone we hate collapsed under his load, we cannot turn aside. We must help unload the burden.

The principle of reciprocal love – the “Golden Rule” – even when expressed in discreet patterns of behavior, is still hard to accept. The covenantal commitment to love – that is, to act in a loving manner and, hopefully, create loving hearts – is a life-long practice and study. As hard as it is to do, it is much harder to understand. It is to the credit of the Israelites that after hearing all these laws, accepted them with the words, na’ashe v’nisma, “we will do and then we will understand.” (Exodus 24:7) It is as if they already knew Hillel’s famous “elevator speech”, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary, go and study!”

“THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY"

January 26, 2017

“Think globally and act locally.” This statement is a fundamental principle of Torah, the accumulated wisdom of the Jewish people. Although it is of recent origin and appears in various contexts including environmental action, urban planning, and economic development, it captures a basic dynamic of Jewish teaching – the need to apply universal principles to particular contexts. From biblical times on we have attempted to apply the fundamental values that honor and elevate human life and sustain and cherish creation to the specific situations that confront us.

This dynamic process underlies our understanding of the rules and regulations of the Sefer Ha-B’rit (Book of the Covenant or Covenant Code), a collection of laws appearing within the weekly portion Mishpatim. Within the narrative context of the Book of Exodus, the revelation of the Decalogue immediately precedes Moses’ presentation of these ordinances to the Israelites. Thus, the Covenant Code begins the process of applying universal values as expressed in the Ten Commandments to the real-life challenges facing our people.

This dynamic is enshrined in the text itself. Modern biblical scholarship has identified two different types of legislation within the Covenant Code; apodictic laws – universal proclamations – and casuistic laws – specific applications. The former consists of a number of straightforward commands such as “You shall not wrong a stranger!” (Exodus 22:20). The latter presents a number cases – the if, when and how an explicit rule should be applied as in the extended exposition of the laws concerning a Hebrew slave at the beginning of the Torah portion (Exodus 21:2-11).

Using biblical legislation as the bedrock for Jewish law and practice, the rabbis of the Talmudic period extracted basic universal principles from both genres of biblical law and applied them to specific life situations. The extended Talmudic discussion of the laws of bailment, for example, expands on a short exposition of such laws in Parashat Mishpatim (Exodus 22:6-14). There, as in other places in the Covenant Code, the Torah text serves as the starting point for a more intensive exploration of the ways in which we are to exercise our general sense of responsibility towards other people in a variety of specific situations.

A clear example of “thinking globally and acting locally” appears in the exposition of the rules concerning interest-free loans to the poor (Exodus 22:24-26). Though a careful reading of the opening clause “When you lend money to My (i.e. God’s) people, to the poor among you . . .” (Exodus 22:24) the rabbis understood the words “My people” broadly, expressing God’s concern for all poor people and not narrowly referring to poor Israelites alone. However, they also understood that we are not God and have a restricted area of action. Therefore, they created an order of responsibility to the poor that began with those most close to us – members of our family – and expanded outward; first to the poor in the Jewish community, and then to the poor, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in our towns and cities and continuing outward in ever broader circles. In contemporary terms, the sages ask us to think about poverty systematically because all poor people are God’s people but apply solutions that work locally for the poor among us.

The principle of “thinking globally and acting locally” has protected us, one the one hand, from being trapped in our own limited concerns and, on the other, from being lost in the pursuit of nebulous dreams and ideals. It has also required that we remain visionaries when we look at what we are doing and pragmatists when we consider universal values. It maintains the dynamic tension between Jews, a specific people, and Judaism, their universal faith. It teaches that like Moses we need to be both prophets and practitioners. And as Hillel recognized when he considered the issue, it is an ongoing Jewish concern – the dynamic tension that drives us forward – or in Hillel’s words, the enduring question: “If not now, when?”

Jewish Community Voice, Cherry Hill NJ, January 30, 2019

THE FIRST BAR MITZVAH

February 24, 2001

The most powerful life-cycle event in the life of a contemporary Jewish family is the celebration of a child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Families commonly invest a large amount of their social, spiritual, and material wealth in marking this a central event in their lives. It is a time when grandparents can be blessed by seeing their values and beliefs transmitted to another generation. It is a time when parents can give thanks for the blessings they have received. It is a time when the young person can demonstrate before family and friends his or her ability to complete a challenging task. It is the time when in the presence of his or her community, a young person affirms his or her commitment to the Jewish tradition.

A Jew’s need to affirm with public celebration his or her commitment to the Jewish way of life — the life of mitzvot (plural of mitzvah) — is so powerful, that Jews who have not celebrated their bar or bat mitzvah often do not feel fully Jewish. The joy felt by people who have gone through the many adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah programs offered by our area synagogues is much deeper than one would expect of someone who has just completed a year or two of serious adult Jewish education. It is clear that they have filled a significant gap in their spiritual lives. They have acknowledged in public their loyalty to our Covenant and our people.

From one perspective, the heavy emphasis on Bar/Bat Mitzvah seems overblown. Technically, all one needs to become a bat or bat mitzvah is to pass one’s thirteenth birthday. At that age, as Jewish young people are taking their first steps from childhood on the journey to Jewish adulthood, we believe that they are old enough to begin to take responsibility for their spiritual, religious and ethical lives. Thus, from this point of view, there is no need for the public affirmation and celebration of something that one gains merely by living.

This would be correct if becoming a Bar/Bat Mitzvah were essentially a private, individual affair, but it is more than that. It is an event that involves the entire community. As the young person demonstrates through word and deed, his or her willingness to follow the way of life guided by the mitzvot , the divinely inspired directives embedded in our sacred covenantal tradition, the community welcomes him or her as an adult and renews for another generation the enduring covenant between God and the Jewish people.

This week’s Torah portion brings us back to the first time our people accepted the covenant, the first Bar Mitzvah celebration. Standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, after hearing Moses review the words of the Ten Commandments and the details of the collection of civil, criminal and ritual law known as the Book of the Covenant, our ancestors proudly declared, “Na’ashe ve-Nishma” — “We will do and we will respond to all that the Eternal has spoken!” In a public ceremony inaugurating the Covenant, they took upon themselves the rights and responsibilities of being Bnei Mitzvah. After their inspiring declaration, Moses, Aaron and the seventy elders of Israel gathered to celebrate with a festive meal. The joy must have been so exalted that while they were eating and drinking, the Torah tells us that they beheld God.

Each time, we, as adult Jews, choose to behave like a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, “one whose life is guided by the mitzvot,” we renew our Covenant in our lives. The first time, however, when we stand before the Holy Ark, in the presence of a congregation of our people and fulfilled the mitzvah of leading them in prayer and study, we join our distant ancestors at the foot of Sinai and by what we do and say, we spiritually declare with them the fateful words, na’ashe ve-nishma, “we will do and we will respond.” At that moment, our Covenant is renewed and the Jewish people are strengthen.

"HAVING YOURSELVES BEEN SLAVES IN EGYPT"

January 30, 1999

One of the greatest challenges our ancestors faced after leaving Egypt was to find the appropriate way to use the experience of slavery and oppression to shape their political structures and social conscience. They needed to answer the question of how the memory of slavery and slaughter would be expressed in the life and culture of the Jewish people. As they forged a new society in the course of their wanderings from the borders of Egypt to the Land of Promise, under Moses’ leadership and God’s guidance, they needed to grapple with the horrendous experiences of slavery and slaughter, powerlessness and despair. The question that had to be answered was this: Would their bitter memories lead to a society built on anger and resentment or to one founded on compassion and concern?

We cannot diminish the seriousness of their task. The path they followed defined our distinctive Jewish value system, which stresses concern for the stranger because we remember that we were strangers in Egypt (Exodus 22:20; 22:9) and support for the vulnerable members of society because we know that God, who heard our cries in Egypt, pays heed to the cries of the poor and oppressed (22:21-26). The laws embedded in this week’s portion, Parashat Mishpatim, the first of many formal lists of rules and regulations that we will read in the course of our yearly journey through the Torah, stress, explicitly and implicitly, that we are to cherish freedom, abhor oppression, and deal honestly and equitably with both those whom we love and those whom we hate. We are called upon to build a society that promotes individual responsibility and provides legal protections for all its members.

We are blessed by having received such an inheritance. As we view the world today, we see how memories of ancient offenses, historical slights, deep-seated tribal and ethnic animosities, and racial and class oppression still direct the course of peoples and nations. The struggles in the Balkans, the slaughters in East Africa, conflicts in the former Soviet Union, strife in India, and troubles all over the world demonstrate daily how the anger and resentment fed by memories of past suffering can bring on even greater suffering.

On the individual level, too, we see the adverse effects of suffering. We know how often victims of abuse grow up to be abusers. We see how frequently those who have struggled to make a way for themselves, show little compassion to those following behind them. All too often, the people cast away their recollections of their difficult past and imagine their present, more‑privileged state is theirs by right and is to be guarded forever.

As Jews living just a half-century after the Holocaust, an experience at least as shattering as that of Egypt and far more painful to us because it is still part of our living memory, this question challenges us anew. We are still in the process of rebuilding Jewish life after the destruction of European Jewry. As we construct monuments and erect museums to the memory of the Holocaust, we need to ask ourselves if our memory of those dark days will turn us into another small angry people, or instead, will we remain the proud descendants of ex-slaves who taught us and the world that suffering can also motivate us to compassion.

For us today, as it was for our ancestors in the desert, this is not a theoretical question. For our brothers and sisters in Israel, the way that the Jewish State deals with its non-Jewish citizens and the care that it gives to the poor and vulnerable in its midst will reveal the way the question is answered in our days. Although we cannot ignore the compelling political, social, and economic pressures the State of Israel faces, we must remember that our biblical ancestors also confronted hostile neighbors, economic hardships, and the challenge of building a united nation from diverse tribes.

As American Jews, we find this question to be just as difficult. How we answer it will influence our relations with fellow Jews in Israel and around the world and with our fellow Americans of all religious and ethnic heritages. We need to ask ourselves if we, as Jews, wish to become an isolated minority, struggling with and against other groups at home and abroad in a constant battle to preserve and enhance our situation, or do we wish to build a national and world society in which all people receive the support and protection our Torah tells us they deserve.

This week we read: “You shall not oppress a stranger, because you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” and this week we ask ourselves if we are still the same people as those who heard those words for the first time. Do we truly remember what it was to be a stranger, to be oppressed, and to be downtrodden, and do our memories enable us to respond to the cries of those oppressed today?

CELEBRATING GOD'S PRESENCE

February 21, 2004

Of all the Biblical stories describing the indescribable events that took place at Sinai during the revelation of the Torah, I have always felt a special connection to the tale of Moses, his brother, Aaron, his two nephews, Nadav and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel, gathering in God’s presence and celebrating the gift of the Torah with something to eat and something to drink. (Exodus 24: 9-11) I could easily see myself with them enjoying that special moment with my family and friends. The experience of leaving Egypt and receiving the Torah changed the entire Jewish people. We were no longer slaves. We were on the road to freedom. We received the gift of sacred knowledge and wisdom. It was a time to rejoice in God’s holy presence. It was a time to celebrate the sacred moments of life.

As a child, my favorite part of Jewish worship was the period of eating, drinking, and socializing at the end of the formal service. For me and my friends, this little party marked the climax of the service. We looked forward to having something to eat, something to drink, and the freedom to move around. Though we may have felt that the service was a bit too slow and the rabbi spoke a bit too long, it felt good to be with family and friends in a special place at a special time. Little did we realize that adults called the party “the Kiddush,” to underscore the kedushah, the holiness, of the moment when we gather as a community to mark the major and minor events of our lives in the presence of the Divine.

Even today at services, I look forward to the Kiddush, that brief period of celebration after worship. It is a time to relax, reflect, and reconnect with friends in a special place at a special time. Everyone seems a little happier, a little looser, a little lighter than they did a little while ago at the beginning of the service. Something special just happened and we acknowledge it together by celebrating life with something to eat, something to drink. We have gathered together and have, at least for a while, formed a community grounded in a shared experience.

In both Hebrew and English the name of the Jewish worship space, Beit Kenneset, and synagogue, respectfully, refers to gathering a community together. Many different concerns call us from many different places. Some of us attend the synagogue as part of our regular Jewish spiritual practice in a sacred place at a sacred time. Others of us come to share the special passages of life with family and friends -- a baby naming, a bar or bat mitzvah, a confirmation -- in a place that sanctifies those moments. Others come to hear a sermon or study the Torah or honor a friend. At times all of us may enter this place made holy by our hopes and memories to find support when we are in need and comfort when we have suffered a loss.

But by the end of the service, the why we gathered is less important than the experience we shared. If all went as intended, we all should have been touched, if only in a small way, by the holiness of the moment, the sanctity of the place, and the spirit of a congregation praying together. In spiritual terms, the feeling of openness, growth, warmth, comfort, awareness, and security we have experienced is kedushah, holiness. So like Moses, Aaron, and the seventy elders of Israel, we, too, celebrate God’s presence in our lives with something to eat and something to drink. We say Kiddush and raise our cups to toast our God.

Every Jewish service reflects the gathering at Sinai. We gather from different places, for different reasons with different expectations. With a little luck and a little patience, by the end of the service, we may see things in a new light and hear things in a different voice. We may be moved albeit a little. Life may seem a touch brighter. We may feel somewhat wiser. Whatever it may be, we will have received at least a bit of Torah. As Moses and his friends have shown us, that’s worth celebrating with something to eat and something to drink in the radiant presence of God.

Terumah Exodus 25.1 – 27.19

SO YOU WANT TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?

February 12, 2000

Do you want to be a millionaire? For most people the answer appears obvious. “Of course,” they would answer, “who wouldn’t?” Prosperity is a wonderful blessing. We all want to live well. We pray that our children will never lack the things they need and will be able to enjoy at least some of what they want. At the beginning of each Jewish year, we wish each other health and happiness, blessing and wealth, but we also know that wealth is not enough for a good life.

In the Jewish tradition, there is nothing wrong with being wealthy. For Jews, the spiritual and ethical issues surrounding money focus on how one acquires wealth and what one does with it, and not with wealth itself. Financial well-being, just like any other material blessing, has no intrinsic value. How we use it determines its value and measures our character, and to use it correctly, we need wisdom.

The book of Exodus contrasts the proper and improper use of our monetary blessings by placing the story of the Golden Calf, the story of our ancestors’ idolatrous rebellion against God, in the midst of its description of the building of the Mishkan, God’s holy Tabernacle. The construction of both, the Golden Calf and the Mishkan, required the generous gifts of the Jewish people, but one, the Golden Calf, became a powerful metaphor of base materialism and the other, the Tabernacle, became an enduring sacred symbol of spiritual strength, insight and wisdom.

Its alright to pray for wealth but there are better things to desire. This understanding is underscored in a brief discussion from the Talmud inspired by the description of the Mishkan in this week’s Torah portion, Terumah. In this passage, we learn of Rabbi Isaac’s suggestion that one who wishes to become wise should turn southward when praying, while one who wishes to become rich should turn northward when praying. The sages ask him why this is so, and he responds by referring to the description of the Mishkan. Rabbi Isaac reminds them that in the Tabernacle the golden table, the symbol of plenty, was on the north side while the Menorah, the seven-branched lamp stand, the symbol of the light of wisdom, was on the south side. Obviously, then, he explains, if one wishes to be wealthy, one should pray in the direction of the golden table, but if one wishes to acquire wisdom, one should pray in the direction of the Menorah.

But R. Joshua ben Levi disagrees with him. He argues that one should always turn in prayer to the south, in the direction of the Menorah. He claims that when one becomes wise, one also becomes rich, and he supports his position with a passage from the Book of Proverbs: "Length of days is in wisdom’s right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor" (Prov. 3:16). (From the Talmud, Baba Bathra 25b)

Rabbi Joshua understood that wealth without honor has no value and riches without wisdom are mere vanity. But there is more to his argument. It is that one who is blessed with wisdom will never be truly poor and that the ultimate blessing is that of wisdom. No matter what one’s station in life may be, each of us needs to be blessed with the light of wisdom.

In this context, Rabbi Joshua’s choice of a proof text from Proverbs gains deeper significance. The biblical legend of King Solomon, to whom the Book of Proverbs is traditionally ascribed, itself supports Rabbi Joshua’s position. According to the Book of First Kings, at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, God came to the new king in a dream and offered him whatever gift he might desire. Solomon could have asked for power, wealth, military prowess or anything else a king might need, but he had only one wish. That wish was to be blessed with wisdom. God granted Solomon not only the blessing for which he asked, wisdom, but also blessings for which he did not ask — wealth and honor, greater than that of any king. (1 Kings 3:5-14). Solomon the Wise enters history as the greatest of Israel’s kings and the builder of the Beit Ha Mikash, God’s Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

Today, the Mishkan and Solomon’s Temple are no more. They survive only in the memory of our people. Each year, we recall them as we read the Torah and Haftara portions that tell of their creation. But it is not surprising that of all the ornate items that filled the Tabernacle of Old and Solomon’s Temple, only the seven branched Menorah, the lamp of wisdom, has remained an enduring symbol of Jewish faith.

"GOD'S HOUSE AND GOD'S CREATION"

For Saturday, February 20, 2021 / 8 Adar 5781

God’s creation of humanity in the Divine image is God’s final act in the creation account which opens the Torah. While it is difficult to comprehend how the physical and spiritual configuration of humanity models God’s understanding of God’s self, this statement expresses a belief that there is a reciprocal correspondence between the human and the divine. God and humanity are bound to each other.

What is essential to humanity is essential to God. What God needs, humans need. What people desire, God desires. The relationship between the human and the divine form the center of our spiritual searching.

In the context of Parashat Terumah, which presents the detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable desert sanctuary, God and humanity seek a sense of intimacy with each other. We want to live in God’s house and God wants to dwell in our midst.

Some of our most beloved Psalms powerfully express our wish to abide with God. In Psalm 27, the psalm for the High Holiday season, the psalmist’s only desire is to spend a lifetime dwelling in God’s abode, contemplating God’s gracious nature. Psalm 23, the Shepard Psalm, ends with the hope that the author’s time in God’s house extends indefinitely. Despite our awareness of our moral, spiritual, and intellectual failings and limitations, we still seek the safety, comfort, and reassurance of God’s presence.

In Parashat Terumah, which introduces a lengthy body of material describing the building of the Mishkan, God’s holy place, and the spiritual activities that took place within it, we see that despite our stubbornness, rebelliousness, and lack of vision, God desires to dwell in our midst. This holy place, whose plans God reveals to Moses, will be a place for the Israelites to gather, to seek forgiveness for their sins, to offer thanksgiving for their blessings, and to celebrate sacred moments of communal and personal life.

While our memory of the Exodus and the years of wandering are preserved in sacred legend, the image of God dwelling in the midst of the Jewish community has remained a powerful metaphor describing our sense of God’s immediate presence, the Shekinah, in our lives. Although the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) and its successor, the Beit HaMikdash (the Temple in Jerusalem), the physical expressions of this metaphor are long gone, Scripture offers descriptions of these structures that allow us to find those moments of intimacy with God it considers fundamental to the human experience.

Through shared language Scripture binds together God’s Creation of the World and Israel’s construction of God’s house. Rabbinic literature expands on this insight in Midrashic descriptions of the Mishkan, as a microcosm, a miniature representation of the great world in which we live. The reciprocal relationship between God’s work, in Hebrew, melakhah, building our home, the great world within which we live, and our labor, also called melakhah, erecting God’s home, the small world contained within the Mishkan, provides the framework of activities that we avoid on the Shabbat, the weekly celebration of the miracle of Creation.

Through Jewish imagery and Jewish practice, the Mishkan retains its special place as God’s house within our hearts and the heart of our community. Jewish tradition describes our homes, our synagogues, and our schools as small sanctuaries. Our spiritual practices aim to direct our focus on the mishkan within us. The ethical and moral implications of our life choices are to reflect the presence of the God who seeks a dwelling place in our midst. Our internalized memory of the Mishkan, a model of the physical world God created as our home, directs us to preserve the holiness of creation.

Our reading of the building of the Mishkan asks us to take seriously the biblical understanding of the reciprocal nature of the divine-human relationship. The fundamental questions asked of us are two-fold: What do we need to do to build a home for God within the social world of humanity? and What do we need to do to live within the physical home God built for us?

Tezaveh Exodus 27:20 – 30:10

IT'S WHAT’S UNDERNEATH THAT COUNTS

October 25, 2007

Our ancestors were very proud of their religious institutions. This week’s and last week’s Torah portions provide lengthy, detailed descriptions of both the Mishkan — the portable desert shrine that served as our people’s religious center from the early years of the desert wandering until the completion of the Temple in Jerusalem — and the vestments of the High Priest and his fellow priests. The care given by the Torah, a book that generally avoids description, in presenting minute details, testifies to the central role that the Temple and the priesthood played in our ancestors’ lives. As we read and study these two Torah portions, we see a wondrous, holy place built of fine woods and adorned with precious metals and costly fabrics — the inspired work of our people’s skilled artisans and master craftsmen.

We can easily imagine the joy our ancestors felt when they worshiped God in such a beautiful setting. They knew that, as members of the community of Israel, they each owned a share in this holy place. Standing in the richly decorated Mishkan and later in the even more elaborate Temple, while having their religious needs served by priests dressed as royalty, must have been an uplifting, transforming experience. They were princes and princesses in the courts of their God and could participate, at least for a while, in a life style normally reserved for only the very rich and powerful.

Like our ancestors, we, too, take pride and joy in our religious institutions. We, too, try to make them as beautiful as possible. There has been a renaissance of Jewish ritual art and a renewed interest in Judaica, resulting from our desire to enhance the aesthetic quality of our religious experiences.

But we need to remember that our temples and synagogues are much more than places of beauty. They are to be holy and they acquire holiness when people come to them for moral instruction and spiritual transformation. They are sanctuaries because they are places to which people come before God to unburden their tired souls, and from which they leave refreshed with a renewed commitment to life and its goodness.

The true value of a religious institution is not found in its architecture or in its treasures but in the happenings beneath its roof, and within its walls, and the feelings its people experience upon entering its doors and the actions they take after leaving. The experience within these buildings transforms them from empty halls to holy places.

Likewise, the true worth of rabbis and cantors is what they carry within their souls. Their worth comes from their depth of knowledge, strength of character and purity of heart. It is found in the humility that grows from knowing that behind their titles and underneath their robes, they are the same as all people — brothers and sisters in the human family.

Although this understanding of the true and lasting value of our religious institutions and leaders pervades the Bible, it is easy to miss it in this week’s and last week’s Torah portions. But even in these portions, which focus on the glory and splendor of the sanctuary and its priesthood, the Torah, with its wonderful and amazing sense of humor, manages to sneak the message in. With one, short, sharp, ironic verse, our Torah punctures whatever bit of self-aggrandizing pride and ballooning ego that Aaron, the first High Priest, and all other priests after him might have felt as they put on the elaborate robes of their office to serve God with impressive rituals in our people’s glorious sanctuary.

The Torah concludes its lengthy discussion of the High Priest’s vestments — his breastplate, ephod, robe, tunic, and miter, all made out of the richest materials — with a short reminder that even the High Priest needs to wear underwear (Exodus 38:42). This short passage gently reminds us that our clergy are merely human beings, and our religious institutions are human institutions dedicated to the growth of the human soul. In its own special and sacred way, the Torah slices through human conceit and pretense and reminds us that we are all bound by a common humanity. Everyone, as the saying goes, puts on his or her pants the same way — one leg at a time.

This insight was the spiritual armor the priests needed to enter the Temple and guide the people in worshiping God, whose presence was felt in those beautiful, sacred courts. It made them understand that the splendor and glory of the Temple was a tribute to God and that the purpose of the sanctuary’s beauty was to elevate souls, not to boost egos.

Ki Tissa Exodus 30:11-34:35

THE PROMISE OF FORGIVENESS

February 22, 2003

The great drama of our Torah revolves around the themes of sin and forgiveness — human error and Divine forbearance. The great teaching of our scripture is that forgiveness is available to those who seek it. The great hope of our tradition is that we all avail ourselves of this gift and turn in repentance from our errors and mistakes to live fuller lives. The great dream of our people is that we can use this insight to strengthen the spiritual bonds that unite us with each other and with our God.

Our great fall festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur celebrate this basic principle of Jewish faith. In the imagery of the High Holidays, the Gate of Repentance is never closed to those who in sincerity seek God’s life-renewing, forgiving presence. Five times on Yom Kippur, as part of the five recitations of the Amida, we recite a brief liturgy we call Selichot or “Forgiveness Prayers.”

The heart of short service, which includes our confessional prayers Ashamnu and Al Cheit, is the recitation of a passage from this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, known as God’s “Thirteen Attributes.” These moving words — “Adonai, Adonai, God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to Anger, and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of Kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, Willful Sin, and Error, and Who Cleanses” (Exodus 34:6-7) — connect our High Holiday worship to the covenant crafted at Sinai between our ancestors and our God.

These divine words, God’s promise to forgive, were first heard by Moses when he successfully beseeched God to pardon our erring ancestors after the shattering of the two tablets of the law and the destruction of the Golden Calf. The Torah informs us that these “Thirteen Attributes” witness God’s abiding promise of forgiveness. With these words God was reconciled with our ancestors after their sinful worship of the golden calf. Throughout our history, we have used them as a prayerful way of spiritually reconnecting to God when we become aware of our sins and turn in repentance (see Talmud Rosh Hashanah 17b).

These words, God’s promise of forgiveness, form the climax of the awesome but troubling account of the revelation at Sinai — the proclamation of the Ten Commandments and the enumeration of the civil, criminal and religious laws that provide the framework for the unfolding of Jewish life. As Jews, we understand life is a journey and for us our Torah is our guide along the way. When we wander off the path, as we surely will, our Torah informs us that God is not there to punish us but to redirect us down the proper course.

The miracle of Sinai was not merely the revelation of the Torah but the transformation of our ancestors from a band of freed slaves into a nation, a family, a tribe. The rules and regulations laid out in the Torah, summarized by the Ten Commandments and expounded by our teachers and sages over the generations played a crucial role in this metamorphosis. Ever since Sinai, they have described the characteristic patterns of behavior that reinforce the bonds we have with our fellow Jews and with our God. They have helped us put into action our people’s ethical and spiritual insights and define what it means to be part of the Jewish family.

Rules and regulations, however, are not enough keep families together. Our mutual ties of love and respect, our shared stories and our common dreams cement us to each other. Our ability to seek forgiveness from those we may have hurt and to forgive those who have hurt us strengthens the bonds that connect us. God’s ability to forgive our ancestors after the sin of the golden calf and keep them as his people is our abiding model of the spirit of forgiveness.

The spiritual drama Sinai is the very human drama of high expectations and deep disappointments followed not by despair and rejection but by struggle, forgiveness and reconciliation. We live out that drama everyday of our lives. Once a year, on the High Holidays, the sacred season of reconciliation, we draw strength from our biblical heritage. We use the words and images of this week’s Torah portion, to create a spiritual framework within which we can seek and receive the blessing of forgiveness.

TRYING TO LIMIT THE DIVINE – THE SIN OF THE GOLDEN CALF
February 26, 2005

The overriding concern of the last portion of the Book of Exodus is how can one relate to God without shrinking God to the limitations of human insight and imagination. The bulk of the material, which begins with the Torah portion, Terumah, deals with the intricate description of the construction of the Mishkan, the portable, tent-like sanctuary that was to be the spiritual center of Israelite life during the forty years of desert wandering. Exodus relates the detailed specifications of the Mishkan, its contents and the dress of its priests as revealed to Moses followed by an equally detailed description of how the plans were executed by the skilled Israelite artisans. By building the Mishkan, the Israelites created a place in which God’s presence could rest. But the difficult spiritual issue of what it means to be in an intimate relationship with God is not addressed. By creating religious institutions and structures are we making room for God in our personal and communal lives or are we attempting to contain the Divine in such a way that it can be assessable and useful to us?

We have to wait until the portion, Ki Tissa, to probe that question. The resumption of the narrative portion Ki Tissa is a welcomed break from the technical details of the preceding and following Torah portions. Yet it contains one the most challenging stories of the desert experience – the story of the Golden Calf. It teaches us, through the negative example, that we cannot contain for God by reducing God to a man-made image. The best we can do is to build a place for God in our hearts, our homes and our communities and pray that that place is filled with God’s spirit. To do otherwise is to fall into the same trap that caught Aaron and the Israelites.

The Israelites, worried that Moses, their leader, had not come down from the mountain, felt abandoned by God and man. They approached Aaron, Moses’ brother who had been left in change of them while Moses communed with God on the peak of Mount Sinai, and demanded that he produce a god for them to lead them on their journey. Aaron complied. He asked for contributions of gold jewelry, melted it down and cast a figure of a young ox out of the molten metal. The image, known as “the Golden Calf” was acknowledged as the very God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt. Aaron then constructed an altar and declared the following day to be a festival of Y-H-W-H (HaShem / the Eternal).

The next day as the Israelites celebrated, the Eternal informed Moses of the events at the foot of the mountain and sent him hurrying down from the top of Mount Sinai to investigate. Upon seeing the Golden Calf and the festivities, Moses hurled the two tablets of covenant at the image smashing it and the tablets. Moses reproached Aaron and reasserted his leadership of the Israelites.

In the Exodus version of the story, it is clear that the Israelites had no desire to replace the Eternal, the God who had led them out of Egypt, with another deity or deities. They were not rejecting God. Rather they wanted a to have God with them in a way that they could comprehend. The awesome events of the Exodus and the Revelation on Sinai presented them with a God of limitless power who, for all their knowledge, might have even consumed their leader Moses who had guided them from slavery to the foot of Sinai. Aaron, Moses’s brother, the first High Priest, the prototypical religious leader, complied.

While Moses was on the top of Mount Sinai experiencing the boundless nature of Israel’s God, his brother, Aaron, faced the difficult task of packaging the Holy One in a form that would be understandable and spiritually assessable to his people. The image of God that Aaron produced satisfied the Israelites’ spiritual longings. Aaron gave them an image of God that was present in their lives. In this image or through this image they could recognize the very God who brought them out of Egypt. In Aaron’s Golden Calf they had an image of God that they could carry with them, that was safe, and that was domesticated. The only trouble was that it was not God. It was, at best, only a time and spaced bound human attempt to capture the unbounded glory of the divine. Their error was not recognizing this. Their sin was thinking that their image of God was really God.

Today we are not free of this error. Although we are unlikely to reduce God to a physical image, we, all too often, try to shrink God into an easily digestible theological reality. In times of trouble and stress, we ask our religious leaders to provided us with a god that we can put into our pockets to give us a sense of control over our lives, our world and even, our God.

This is a dangerous error. As we have seen in the religious responses to the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean that our attempts of explain God’s ways are ultimately intellectually dishonest and spiritually dissatisfying. On deeper reflection their authors and those that accept them seem to follow a God that appears shallow, self-centered, callous, or cruel.

More frightening , however, are those who attempt to bring their image of God into the public arena and political marketplace and strive to force it upon others. These are the people e who justify their acts by claiming to know God’s will; those who take their image of God and figuratively and, sadly, all too often these days, realistically beat others over the head with it ,justifying aggressive and violent policies and agendas.

As the Gold Calf episode show us, the Torah rejects such thinking. God is not to be contained. God is to be experienced and we are to respond to that experience in Godly ways.

The thrust of the final portion of the Book of Exodus is to show us how our ancestors constructed a place for God in the center of their camp and to help us relive the adventure of having that space filled with God’s presence. The goal of the rest of the Torah and in that light the rest of Scripture, is to teach us not who God is but how to live so that our lives as individuals and as a community reflect God’s presence. In Jewish terms, how to live a life filled with mitzvot. The aim of Torah is to teach us how to be Godly and not, as Aaron and the Israelites tried to do, to hold the goods on God.

THE PROPHET BEZALEL

March 11, 2023

The Eternal spoke to Moses: See I have singled out by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have endowed him with a divine spirit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge of every kind of craft . . . (Exodus 31:1-3)

I’m OK with tools. I can do simple repairs but I’m not a skilled craftsman. I’m not Bezalel, the biblical artisan, but whenever I start a project, I pray that the divine spirit grants me the inspiration I need to do the job right, just as God blessed Bezalel.

When I pass a building site, I am amazed at the skill of the workers, and how quickly and efficiently they do their jobs. They look at the plans and know intuitively what to do. It almost seems miraculous.

To me the great engineering and construction projects of the past are amazing. Visiting large industrial complexes and simple workshops fills me with awe. Modern technology impresses me, but when I consider more ancient human accomplishments, the question, “How did they do that?” barely expresses my sense of wonder.

Bezalel, the divinely inspired artisan, was an impressive figure. He used God’s gifts of chochma – wisdom, tevunah – understanding, and da’at – knowledge to create objects of utility and beauty from raw materials. Like a prophet, he was filled with God’s spirit. Like a sage, he was skilled in interpreting God’s word. He teaches that those who work with their hands are as closely connected to God’s word as those who work with their minds. He shows us that the intellectual and spiritual demands and rewards of one who masters any worthy human activity are equal to those of a Torah scholar.

Bezalel and those who like him have the wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to work in every kind of craft are intimately connected to God, the Creator of All. The Torah underscores this connection by using the same word – melacha – to refer to both Bezalel’s work in building the Mishkan, the Desert Sanctuary, and God’s work in constructing the world. All creation, the macrocosm, demonstrates God’s craftsmanship. The Mishkan, a microcosm, the symbolic representation of creation, reflects Bezalel’s workmanship.

While the Torah honors those who labor, we often have failed to do likewise with the Bezalels in our lives. We often favor those who work with their minds over those who work with their hands. We differentiate between those involved in the arts and those who do crafts. We imagine our children being doctors, lawyers, and engineers rather than plumbers, electricians, and mechanics. We forget that God needed Bezalel as much as God needed Moses. Moses had the skill to teach God's word, but Bezalel had the gifts to make that word real in our lives.

I enjoy watching the credits at the end of a movie. I find the size of the team needed to make the movie a reality, overwhelming. The film industry understands that everyone who is involved in making a movie is important. A successful film depends on those who have the imagination, skill, and knowledge to take an idea and make it work.

Hopefully, we won’t wait until the credits run at the end of our lives to honor all those, who, blessed like Bezalel, labor so hard to create that which we need to survive and thrive in this world. Seeing what people when filled with a divine spirit can create should always evoke a sense of awe and humility. I may not know how they did it, but, wow, I am sure glad they did.

Why are You Here?

A Meditation for Earthquake Victims

Prayer Service

March 16, 2023

Haddonfield Methodist Church

Rabbi Lewis John Eron, Ph.D.

Elijah at Mt. Horeb (Sinai)

1 Kings 19:9-13

ווַיָּבֹא־שָׁ֥ם אֶל־הַמְּעָרָ֖ה וַיָּ֣לֶן שָׁ֑ם וְהִנֵּ֤ה דְבַר־יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ל֔וֹ מַה־לְּךָ֥ פֹ֖ה אֵלִיָּֽהוּ׃

[19:9] There Elijah went into a cave, and there he spent the night.

Then the word of YHVH (HaShem – The Eternal One) came to him. He said to him, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

ַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩ קַנֹּ֨א קִנֵּ֜אתִי לַיהֹוָ֣ה ׀ אֱלֹהֵ֣י צְבָא֗וֹת כִּֽי־עָזְב֤וּ בְרִֽיתְךָ֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶ֣יךָ הָרָ֔סוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶ֖יךָ הָרְג֣וּ בֶחָ֑רֶב וָאִוָּתֵ֤ר אֲנִי֙ לְבַדִּ֔י וַיְבַקְשׁ֥וּ

אֶת־נַפְשִׁ֖י לְקַחְתָּֽהּ׃

[19:10]Elijah replied, “I am moved by zeal for YHVH, (HaShem) the God of Hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and put Your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they are out to take my life.”

וַיֹּ֗אמֶר צֵ֣א וְעָמַדְתָּ֣ בָהָר֮ לִפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָה֒ וְהִנֵּ֧ה יְהֹוָ֣ה עֹבֵ֗ר וְר֣וּחַ גְּדוֹלָ֡ה וְחָזָ֞ק מְפָרֵק֩ הָרִ֨ים וּמְשַׁבֵּ֤ר סְלָעִים֙ לִפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה לֹ֥א בָר֖וּחַ יְהֹוָ֑ה וְאַחַ֤ר הָר֙וּחַ֙ רַ֔עַשׁ לֹ֥א בָרַ֖עַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה׃

[19:11] “Come out,” God called, “and stand on the mountain before the YHVH (Hashem).”

And lo, YHVH (Hashem) passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of YHVH (Hashem) ; but YHVH (Hashem) was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but YHVH (Hashem) was not in the earthquake.

וְאַחַ֤ר הָרַ֙עַשׁ֙ אֵ֔שׁ לֹ֥א בָאֵ֖שׁ יְהֹוָ֑ה וְאַחַ֣ר הָאֵ֔שׁ ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה׃

[19:12] After the earthquake—fire; but YHVH (HaShem) was not in the fire. And after the fire—a soft murmuring sound.

וַיְהִ֣י ׀ כִּשְׁמֹ֣עַ אֵלִיָּ֗הוּ וַיָּ֤לֶט פָּנָיו֙ בְּאַדַּרְתּ֔וֹ וַיֵּצֵ֕א וַֽיַּעֲמֹ֖ד פֶּ֣תַח הַמְּעָרָ֑ה וְהִנֵּ֤ה אֵלָיו֙ ק֔וֹל וַיֹּ֕אמֶר מַה־לְּךָ֥ פֹ֖ה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ׃

[19:13] When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice addressed him: “Why are you here, Elijah?”

וַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩ קַנֹּ֨א קִנֵּ֜אתִי לַיהֹוָ֣ה ׀ אֱלֹהֵ֣י צְבָא֗וֹת כִּֽי־עָזְב֤וּ בְרִֽיתְךָ֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶ֣יךָ הָרָ֔סוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶ֖יךָ הָרְג֣וּ בֶחָ֑רֶב וָאִוָּתֵ֤ר אֲנִי֙ לְבַדִּ֔י וַיְבַקְשׁ֥וּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁ֖י לְקַחְתָּֽהּ׃ {ס}

[19:13] He answered, “I am moved by zeal for YHVH (Hashem), the God of Hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and have put Your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they are out to take my life.”

So ... The prophet Elijah, after fleeing from King Ahab, seeks refuge and solace at Mt Horeb (Sinai) God’s holy mountain in the midst of the wilderness.

“Why are you here?”, God askes the Prophet

And the Prophet answers, “I am moved by zeal for YHVH (Hashem ) – for God”

And then God orders Elijah out of the cave and shows the prophet the brute force of nature Ruach – whirlwind ; Ra’ash – earthquake; Eish – Fire

But God was not in the Ruach – the whirlwind,

nor in the Ra’ash – the earthquake,

nor in the Eish - the Fire

But after the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the fire, there was the ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה – the still small voice, a soft murmuring sound.

What was that voice?

Was it the cry of a person trapped in the rubble of a fallen house?

Was it the tears of a child who lost her family?

Was it the whimper of a cherished pet wandering aimlessly through shattered buildings?

Was it the wind blowing through the survivor’s tent?

Was it the quiet settling of dust after the earth stopped shaking and the buildings collapsed and the fires went out?

What was that voice?

Some say that it was the voice of God.

Some say that it was a prophetic charge

Some say that is was the silent pause, after the world has shifted, in which we are called to action, challenged to help, to answer the question, God’s question to Elijah – “why are you here?”

And Elijah’s answer needs to be our own – “I am moved by zeal for YHVH, Hashem, God!”

God is not in the Ruach – the whirlwind!

God is not in the Ra’ash – the earthquake!

God is not in the Eish – the fire!

But God’s saving and healing work can appear in the acts and the gifts of all those who respond to the whirlwinds, the earthquakes, the fires and all the natural disasters – to bury the dead, to rescue the trapped, to house the homeless, to rebuild the houses, the businesses, and the lives of those entangled by nature’s power.

God askes Elijah, “Why are you here.”

Elijah responds, “I am moved by zeal for God”

What is our answer?

GOD'S NAME IS "GRACE" AND "COMPASSION"

March 14, 2023

[33:16] וּבַמֶּ֣ה ׀ יִוָּדַ֣ע אֵפ֗וֹא כִּֽי־מָצָ֨אתִי חֵ֤ן בְּעֵינֶ֙יךָ֙ אֲנִ֣י וְעַמֶּ֔ךָ הֲל֖וֹא בְּלֶכְתְּךָ֣ עִמָּ֑נוּ וְנִפְלִ֙ינוּ֙ אֲנִ֣י וְעַמְּךָ֔ מִכׇּ֨ל־הָעָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הָאֲדָמָֽה׃ {פ} [17] וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה גַּ֣ם אֶת־הַדָּבָ֥ר הַזֶּ֛ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר דִּבַּ֖רְתָּ אֶֽעֱשֶׂ֑ה כִּֽי־מָצָ֤אתָ חֵן֙ בְּעֵינַ֔י וָאֵדָעֲךָ֖ בְּשֵֽׁם׃ [18] וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ׃ [19] וַיֹּ֗אמֶר אֲנִ֨י אַעֲבִ֤יר כׇּל־טוּבִי֙ עַל־פָּנֶ֔יךָ וְקָרָ֧אתִֽי בְשֵׁ֛ם יְהֹוָ֖ה לְפָנֶ֑יךָ וְחַנֹּתִי֙ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר אָחֹ֔ן וְרִחַמְתִּ֖י אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲרַחֵֽם׃

[33:16] For how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, Your people and I, from every people on the face of the earth?” [17] And יהוה said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked; for you have truly gained My favor and I have singled you out by name.” [18] He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” [19] And [God] answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name יהוה, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show,” or more literally, and I think far more accurately – I am gracious to those whom I am gracious and I am merciful to those whom I am merciful.

This short passage comes from the past Shabbat’s Torah reading. It comes after the Sin of the Golden Calf and is part of the conversations between Moses and God that resulted in the restoration of God’s relationship with our ancestors, the Israelites, marked by the second set of Tablets.

What is significant here is the way God responds to Moses’ question, “for how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor . . .” (Exodus 33:16)

God answers by providing Moses another insight into who God is and, perhaps, more significantly, how God should be addressed. We have here another revelation of God’s name.

For me this revelation of who God is and how God is named reflects stylistically and linguistically a previous revelation of God’s name to Moses – the revelation at the burning bush in Parashat Shemot, Exodus 3, at the beginning of the story.

There, too, we find ourselves at Sinai – traditionally the location of the Burning Bush – and there, too, God is renewing God’s relationship with Israel, and it is there where Moses is commissioned as God’s prophet and Israel’s leader.

In Parashat Shemot, Moses asked God a similar question – “How am I to answer the Israelites when they ask – What is the name of the God that sent you?

We all know the answer – God calls God’s self – Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh – I am that I am and then connects this name with the ancestral God of the Israelites. As best as we can tell, Ehyeh is an imperfect form of the verbal root, hey-vav-hey. It begins with an aleph which signifies a 1st person singular. The form of Ehyeh which the Israelites used is spelt Y-H-V-H, beginning with a yud which signifies a 3rd person – God, therefore calls himself “I am that I” am and our ancestors call God “He is that He is.”

What is notable here in Exodus 3 is the sentence pattern – verb – relative pronoun - verb repeated.

That is the same sentence pattern that we find in the passage from Ki Tissa – verb – relative pronoun – verb

וְחַנֹּתִי֙ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר אָחֹ֔ן וְרִחַמְתִּ֖י אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲרַחֵֽם׃

I am gracious to those whom I am gracious

and I am merciful to those whom I am merciful.

In Shemot as we begin the story of the Exodus we learn that God is –

In Ki Tissa after reading of the rupture of the relationship between God and Israel and its restoration we learn what God does

In Kissa – God is the Gracious One – God is the Compassionate One – God is Chanun v’Rahum the one who shows Grace and Mercy. God’s new name is HaRachaman, “the Merciful One” and God beomes known as Eil Malei Rachamim, the God full of Mercy.

The Israelite when they were slaves needed to know that God existed – Asher ehyeh Asher

Now, after the sin of the Golden Calf , the Israelites needed to know that God was merciful, gracious and compassionate.

Vayakhel / Pekude Exodus 35:1 - 38:20 / 38:21 - 40:38

THE GREATEST MIRACLE

March 24, 2001

The overall theme of the Book of Exodus is the physical and spiritual transformation of our ancestors from being slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, the land of oppression, to being servants of God in the free and open wilderness. The book opens with our Israelite ancestors building fortresses and warehouses for the king of Egypt and closes with them erecting the Tabernacle, the Mishkan, the holy shrine for the Sovereign of All. Throughout our history our people relived this miraculous metamorphosis each year as we read the Book of Exodus in our synagogue and as we retell the stories as we celebrated the great festivals of Pesach — the celebration of Freedom, Shavout — the holiday of Revelation, and Succot — the feast of the Tabernacle.
   The Book of Exodus’ powerful accounts of the miracles and wonders that God performed in the course of our journey from slavery to freedom — the Ten Plagues, the Splitting of the Red Sea, the Pillar of Fire, the Thundering Voice from Sinai — often takes our focus away from the quieter, but no less miraculous changes in the hearts and minds of our ancestors. Yet, in the few months between the flight out of Egypt and the construction of the Tabernacle, our ancestors changed from being mindless slaves to wise and skilled artisans. This is the greatest miracle of the Book of Exodus.
   The book opens with Pharaoh enslaving the ancestors, imposing upon them the mindless task of making bricks from mud and straw and dragging these bricks to construction sites where they were required to lay them down, one by one, in endless rows as they built the walls of fortresses and warehouses. They labored under the whip of hard-hearted overseers and taskmasters who beat their bodies and crippled their spirits.
   By the end of Exodus, we witness the miraculous transformation. Our ancestors were no longer slaves who were frustrated by the lack of straw needed for bricks. They had become creative, talented, and wise artisans. The work on the Tabernacle was done by people whose hearts were wise and hands skilled (Exodus 35:10). Their work was supported not by the Pharaoh’s forced extractions of material from their fellow Israelites, but by the lavish donations of our now generous and open-hearted ancestors (Exodus 35:4). Their efforts were no longer directed by faceless and heartless officials and bureaucrats, but by their fellow Israelites, who were endowed by God’s spirit with the blessings they needed to complete the project. (Exodus 35:30).
   The description of the two men chosen by God to direct the building, Bezalel of the tribe of Judah and Oholiab of the tribe of Dan, illustrates the changed nature of our people. Having experienced freedom, they acquired the blessings of wisdom, understanding and knowledge. In part, these blessings included the technical skills and experience all good artisans have of their tools and materials and their ability to envision the project even before work has begun. But to a greater extent, these blessings included the knowledge and understanding of the human spirit, that enabled them to inspire creativity in others (Exodus 35:3-34).
   No longer were our people working with mud and straw. Now they were creating works of art out of rare gems, precious metals, exotic woods, and fine fabrics. The yoke of slavery had been lifted from their shoulders and hearts, and as free men and women their innate creativity was released.
   As we come to the end of the Book of Exodus, we are always confronted by the lengthy and detailed description of the Tabernacle so lovingly and carefully built. Why does the Torah cast so much attention on this one project? I believe it is because the building of the Tabernacle is the greatest of all the miracles. It is the miracle of the freeing of the human spirit and the joy of seeing how high our liberated souls can soar.

BUILDING GOD’S HOME IN OUR HEARTS

February 20, 2008

The place in which God’s presence dwelt, whether it was the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple Solomon built in Jerusalem, or its precursor, the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, the portable shrine built according to God’s plan by Moses, was the focus of our Israelite ancestors’ spiritual life. It was the religious center of the Israelite nation. Three times a year, our ancestors would journey to the holy shrine to offer praise and thanksgiving to God and to participate in the worship led by the priests in their brilliant regalia. It was the place of dreams and visions. It was the one spot on earth where the faithful could experience God’s Kavod, God’s awesome and powerful presence.

The Psalmist’s words, “Happy are those who dwell in Your House; they praise You forever,” (Psalm 84:5) captured our ancestor’s spiritual longing. There could be no greater satisfaction than spending time in God’s own house. (Psalm 23, 27, 84). What could be more thrilling than a pilgrimage to God’s sanctuary (Psalm 122)? It was the culmination of a lifelong process of moral and spiritual growth and purification (Psalm 15, 24).

The Torah, the sacred treasury of our ancestors’ spiritual aspirations and religious reflections, addresses their mystical connection to that sacred precinct in which God’s glory dwelt. Most of the Book of Leviticus, a large portion of Deuteronomy, and the last third of the Book of Exodus deal with matters concerning the first holy place, the portable desert shrine the Mishkan, (God’s Dwelling) — its construction, its vessels, its people and the worship that took place within it. When Solomon replaced that portable shrine with its origins in the days of Moses with a permanent structure in Jerusalem, the Beit HaMiqdash, the extended descriptions of his construction, preserved for us today in the later biblical books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, enhanced and developed the images revealed in the Torah’s words. By reading or hearing the traditions enshrined in our holy texts, our ancestors could remember and relive their experiences in the Temple, sharing them with those who had yet to make the visit. They could rebuild the holy place in their mind’s eye and follow, through the power of imagination,the prayers of the Levites and the offerings of the Cohanim.

Even if our ancestors could not be physically in God’s Holy Place, they could spiritually enter God’s sanctuary in moments of prayer and meditation. Through the power of the spoken and written word they could rebuild the Mishkan, God’s Dwelling Place, in their hearts heart and find a place for God to reside within their souls. With this blessing, they could feel connected to God even when circumstances kept them away from the sanctuary, and, even when driven into exile, they had a spiritual place for God to abide inside of them.

They gave us, the Jewish people, their heirs, this special gift — the ability to rebuild God’s holy place through memory, prayer and imagination. The ancient Temple and Moses’ portable shrine are not sacred relics of the past but remain as solid structure of our spiritual world.

That is why, only a few weeks ago, as we read the weekly Torah portion Terumah, we found so engaging God’s challenging words to Moses concerning our Israelite ancestors, “Let them build me a holy place (Mikdash) that I may dwell (veshakanti) among them.” (Exodus 25:8). Over the past few Shabbatot, we marvelled as we read the concluding chapters of the Book of Exodus, which described the rare and costly materials our ancestors had to gather, and the skill and craftsmanship they needed to build God’s sanctuary with them.

The Torah named this holy place the Mishkan, because God intended to dwell (lishkon) within it. In English, however, we often refer to it as the Tabernacle, to remind us of the portable nature of this shrine, which our ancestors carried with them throughout their wanderings on the way to the Promised Land, and the sanctuary, which we carry in our hearts wherever we journey.

It was a hard task to construct a dwelling place for God. Our hearts broke when it seemed that our people might be unable to meet God’s challenge when they disregarded God’s instructions by building the golden calf. We shared their fear when they believed that their shepherd, Moses, left them forever. Weknow how hard it is to find a place for God when we, too, feel lost in the wilderness. Our faith and hope came back when Moses returned to the Israelite camp from the mountain. Rallying his most loyal followers, he turned our ancestors, and us, back to the right path.

They worked hard. Everyone contributed to the project according to his or her means. Skilled men and women worked at creating the various items necessary for the construction of the holy place, its vessels and the vestments of the priests. Although we no longer have a Beit HaMikdash, we know how hard it is to build schools, synagogues and community centers and ensure that they become spiritual as well as physical centers of Jewish life. The communal nature of Israel’s spiritual quest makes sense to us.

In this week’s portion, we have the final accounting and review of the work on the Mishkan. Finally we read how starting on the first day of the first month of the second year after the Exodus from Egypt, Moses assembled the holy place. As Jews have done for generations, we saw ourselves with Moses and the Israelites erecting the Tabernacle. We were part of that crowd and they were within our hearts.

When it was all completed, we, too, could feel the cloud that marked God’s presence in our midst cover the Mishkan and God’s awesome and all-encompassing perceptible essence, God’s kavod — glory, splendor, brilliance, might — fill the sacred space.

The Book of Exodus ends with the note that our ancestors followed that cloud throughout their wanderings. When the cloud moved, they moved. When the cloud rested, they rested. God had found a home in the heart of the Israelite nation. Our ancestors built a place for God’s glory to dwell and they were never alone. We, as generations of Jews before us, can share the experience of God’s glory entering the sacred space we built in our souls each year as we reread the Torah, and when that happens, we, too, know that we are never alone.

OUR APPOINTED TASKS

As part of the Havdalah ceremony, that ritual the marks the end of Shabbat, we praise God for making a distinction between Shabbat, the day of rest, and the six ordinary days of the week. Shabbat is a day set apart, and those Jews who mark the Sabbath through worship and celebration know the special blessings the day brings. Shabbat gives us the opportunity to experience the life-changing power of love expressed through family, friends and community.

We honor Shabbat through beautiful home rituals, delicious meals, joyous worship and the setting aside of our regular routine. Every week, we have the opportunity to pause from our work, look back at all that has happened, give thanks for our blessings, and experience the holiness of the Shabbat. Our Shabbat is, as the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described it, a sanctuary in time.

We must not, however, let our appreciation of Shabbat and its special sense of sanctity lead us to devalue what we do during the rest of the week. Shabbat is a holy day and we acknowledge its holiness through prayer and ritual. But the other days are important, too. The work we do on them to support ourselves and our loved ones and to build stronger homes and communities can bind us to God’s creative work, just as our rest on Shabbat can connect us to God’s sacred sovereignty.

The Kiddush, the Friday evening prayer over wine, reminds us of the two biblical sources for Shabbat. The Kiddush informs us that our Day of Rest reflects the day God set aside to rest after the completion of the works of creation, an event described in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. It teaches us that our celebration of Shabbat honors our liberation from Egyptian slavery, an event whose story concludes at the end of the Book of Exodus, in this week’s double portion, Vayakhel / Pekude, with God’s Divine presence enthroning itself in the mishkan, the portable shrine erected in the heart of our ancestors’ wilderness encampments. Shabbat is the day that honors God’s sovereignty over creation and all human dominions, and on Shabbat, we are princes and princesses in God’s sanctuary.

But this privilege is earned by us, not bestowed upon us. Just as God labored to form our world and just as our ancestors labored to build God’s sacred place, we, too, need to labor to build homes and communities filled with holiness. But if we can see our daily efforts to keep body and soul together as reflections of God’s efforts to create the world and our ancestors’ struggles to build the mishkan, we will have gained a great blessing.

The Torah uses the same word for God’s work in creation (Genesis 2:1-3), for the Israelites’ work in building the mishkan (Exodus 40:33), and for our daily tasks (Exodus 35:2). The word is malachah and it means “appointed task” — i.e., that which each of us has to.

Our malachah may not always be fun, at times it may be hard, boring, or tiring, but it has to be done. Our malachah — the presentations, conferences, meetings, schedules, job descriptions and work loads that define our lives at work and the homework, yard work, laundry, dishes and car pools that fill our time at home — cannot be avoided. We must do our malachah to build our lives, just as our ancestors had to do theirs to build our sanctuary. But our efforts are not meaningless. Just as their hard work of weaving, sewing, smelting, molding, carving, and building found meaning in the holy place erected by their labors, so can our efforts gain meaning through the holy moments they enable us to experience.

Malachah, our’s and God’s, never seems to end. Our siddur (prayer book) teaches us that every day God renews the work of creation. Our calendars and alarm clocks remind us that every day we need to get up and get going. There is always something more to do. But there are also times, when we, like God at the end of creation and Moses and our Israelite ancestors at the completion of the mishkan, need to stop, put our work aside and celebrate what we have created.

On Shabbat, if we take the time to look at the people around us and appreciate what our joint efforts have created, we understand that the past week’s pursuits were not insignificant activities, but meaningful work, malachah. We completed our malachah, that which we were appointed to do for the past week, and, soon, but not right away, we will start our malachah for the next. But before we begin to build our holy place for the next week, we need to spend some time in the one we have just erected.