Monday, July 29, 2013

Re'eh

Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

Be Yourself

 
The gifts brought to the Temple for the Pilgrimage festivals teach us the importance of preserving our unique identities.
By Rabbi Bradley Artson
Social pressure to conform is a steady and soul-deadening force.


With relentless enticements, cultures seek ways to impose similarity of worldview, of behavior, even of thought upon their members. Even contemporary society, with its laudable commitment to individuality, imposes subtle mandates through the media, through the movies, through advertisements and in countless other ways.

Small wonder, then, that the truly free soul is rare. Indeed, for many who practice religion (and for many who flee religion), that conformity and habit are nowhere more imposing than in the realm of faith and ritual.

Three Festivals Is it really that hard to be free? Is it really that impossible to be ourselves? Can it be that God wants us to conform?

Today's Torah portion speaks with great joy of the three Pilgrimage Festivals of the Jewish calendar: "Three times a year--on the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), on the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), and on the Feast of Booths (Sukkot)--all your males shall appear before the Holy One your God in the place that God will choose. They shall not appear before the Holy One empty-handed, but each according to their own gift, according to the blessing that the Holy One your God has bestowed upon you."

Continue reading.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Ekev

Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25

The Land Is The Means


The Land of Israel is a means to the sacred end of developing into Godly people.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson

The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

What are you willing to die for? In the course of our daily routine, there are certain focal points--actions, comments or individuals--which can ignite our passion like nothing else.

While these things may not receive a great deal of conscious thought or even our waking effort, their significance lies in how important they are to our sense of identity, of worth, or of meaning.

Each of us may have different symbols that we care for deeply enough to make a sacrifice. The flag, for some, is significant enough to curtail the Constitution. For others, the Bill of Rights is of such importance that they are willing to tolerate the burning of the national symbol.

Most parents would give up their lives for their children. Some special individuals have given their lives for the children of others. Many people get ulcers and heart attacks in the service of wealth, prestige, or beauty. How we live our lives is often determined by what we value most. And that value can be identified simply by asking yourself, "For what am I willing to die?"

Continue reading.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Shabbat Nachamu: Va-Et'chanan

Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11  

Love The Lord 

Moses' message to relate to God through love, not only through fear, is especially relevant in the modern age. 

By Rabbi Bradley Artson ;The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University. 

What is the proper emotional attitude to take toward God? In our day, as in the past, religious human beings divide into two general camps.

Some argue that we must fear and venerate God, while others stress the need to love God.

The two modes of relationship, fear and love, have a long history within Judaism. Both yirat shamayim (fear of heaven) and ahavat ha-Shem (love of God) find ample attestation in traditional and modern writings. While most Jews retain elements of both, individuals and communities tend to stress one tendency over the other.

The natural consequence of a stress on fearing God is to expect human-divine relating to work in one direction. God commands and people obey. Halakhah (Jewish law) is treated as immutable because people, including community leaders, are overwhelmed by a sense of their own inadequacy and insignificance. The highest form of human response becomes complete, unquestioning acquiescence.

While fear of God may be important as a secondary value, preventing the diminution of God into a rubber-stamp of our latest preferences or our most egregious shortcomings, there is a long precedent that gives priority to relating to God in love.

Continue reading.

Monday, July 8, 2013

D'varim

Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22

Rebukes And Responses

In Moses' final speech to the Israelites, he provides us with a model of effective rebuke.
By Rabbi Bradley Artson

May I have a word with you? The opening words of the fifth book of the Torah begin simply enough, "These are the words that Moses spoke (diber) to all Israel." The Rabbis of the ancient Midrash Sifre Devarim note that every place the Bible uses the verb 'daber' indicates harshness or rebuke, whereas the Hebrew word 'amar' conveys a sense of praise.

Why, then, did Moses 'diber' to the Jews? Why did he speak harshly to them on the border of the Promised Land? Because his final speech to them, the culmination of his long life of service to them and to God, consisted of chastisement--reminding them that they fell far short of the sacred standards embodied in the Torah and Jewish tradition.

And did the people resent Moses' apparent harshness, as most of us would? Did people say, "He never gives us a break," or note that even at the end, he was still haranguing them, unable to focus, even for a moment, on their virtues and better natures? Apparently not.

The speech is, after all, dutifully recorded in the Torah and read every year in synagogues around the world. And when Moses concluded his words and then went off to die, the Jewish people mourned his loss, even as we still keenly feel his absence today.

Can you imagine what it would be like if a Rabbi, at a dinner honoring 25 years of service with a particular synagogue, rather than dwelling on warm memories, started to list all of the congregants' flaws over the past two-and-a-half decades? Can you imagine how resentful and bitter most of us would feel?

Continue reading.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Matot-Masei

Numbers 30:2-36:13

No Neutrality: Silence Is Assent

The laws of nullifying vows teach us that our silence and inaction in the face of contemporary injustice and oppression is akin to assenting to it.
By Rabbi Bradley Artson

 
So much goes on every day, that it seems impossible to keep up with the array of human activity.

Troops march to different parts of the globe, unemployment and disease strike specific groups of people, natural disasters ravage a variety of communities, our environment succumbs to human greed, our politicians legislate, initiate and posture. With so many different activities occurring at the same time, all of them of vital importance, how can we possibly keep up?

Because there is simply so much to follow, and there seems to be so little an individual can do to affect any change at all, many of us simply respond by doing nothing at all. Life will go on without us, we reason, so why get all bothered and upset about things we cannot change?

Today's Torah portion speaks, in the language of its own age, to this timeless question--when to get involved. Parashat Mattot addresses the legal issue of the nullification of vows. It records the ancient law that a woman's vows can be nullified by her husband, provided that he cancels her vows immediately upon hearing them. If he delays in silence, her vow becomes irrevocably binding.

While many moderns are troubled by the power of men to override the vows of women, it is also striking that the Torah insists that the husband either use his power instantly, or lose it forever. Why? After all, if he has the authority to nullify her oath, then why can't he choose to exercise that power later on?

Continue reading.