Monday, January 27, 2014

Terumah

Exodus 25:1−27:19

Ellen Dannin for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Filling the Earth With God's Presence


Haftarah Yitro from last week includes words so important they were made part of the service: “Holy, holy, holy! All the earth is filled with the presence of the Lord of Hosts.”

Or it could be, if we made room for that presence.

Making room for God is a task set for us by all of Jewish teaching, and it is one whose details are included in Parashat Mishpatim.

It is only a few weeks since we read that the children of Israel were freed from a Mitzraim (Egypt) of violence, hatred, and slavery. Yet here we have a parashah (Torah portion) in which the children of Israel have constructed a quarrelsome, hate-filled, violent world of Jewish slave owners. Many of the rules in Mishpatim tell us to respond to evil behavior with violent punishment, often with death. We may be repelled by what we read here and assume that is some long past time that says nothing about our world.

But if we think that, we need to pay more attention to the line of the birchot ha-shachar, the morning blessings, about opening the eyes of the blind. If we could only look at our own society as an outsider does, we would find equal levels of violence and oppression all around us. Where here can we find God’s presence?

We are looking in the wrong places if we think that all we need to do is open our eyes. Filling the earth with God’s presence means that we must take on the task of making space for it. To do that, we must reclaim that space inch by inch from pushing out evil conduct.

This is an enormous task, but it is a task that demands attention to small details. They offer the greatest opportunities for us to act.

Continue reading.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Mishpatim

Exodus 21:1−24:18

Rabbi Howard Cohen for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Approaching Torah
This week's parashah, Mishpatim, is the continuation of the events that occurred at Mount Sinai. As you may remember from last week's d'var Torah, many classic interpretations are based on the principle that there is no real chronological order to the Torah. An interpretation written by Rashi (12th century France) on this week's parashah again uses this device to interpret the narrative. For Rashi claims that Exodus 24:1-12, which appears to occur after the giving of the 10 commandments, is actually a "flashback" to the events that occurred in the days prior to the revelation at Sinai. In these verses Moses recounts to the people all the words of God and the people ratify the covenant by stating "all that God has spoken we will do" (v. 3). Moses then writes down the "words of God" and reads "the account of the covenant ... in the ears of the people [and the people then respond] 'all that God has spoken, we will do and we will hear'." After this section Moses is then told by God to "go up to the mountain and remain there, that I may give you tablets of stone with the instructions and the command."

It seems plausible to read the text using Rashi's chronology. But the question that must then be asked is "what are the words that Moses wrote down and then read to the people if the Ten Commandments had not yet been given?"

According to Rashi, Moses writes down the narrative of the Torah "from the Creation to the Giving of the Torah." In other words, before receiving the Torah the people hear Moses recount to them the "history of the world" from Creation up until that very moment. Upon hearing this they then respond not only "all that God has spoken we will do," as in v. 3, but "we will do AND we will hear" (24:7).

In her discussion of this commentary Aviva Zornberg ("The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus") discusses various commentaries that emphasize the importance of narrative and narration. Something occurs when we hear a story told to us as opposed to simply reading it ourselves. Upon hearing the words from Moses the people are then "committing themselves to a rearticulated relationship with the world of the past, and declaring themselves ready for the new laws of Sinai." In this way "we will do and we will hear" is interpreted as 'we will do all that has been told to us already (the limited laws and rituals prescribed in the Torah prior to Sinai) and now we are prepared to hear the new covenant that you are about to give us that is the culmination of all that has come before it' (my interpretation of Zornberg's interpretation of Rashi's interpretation - and so the chain of interpretation continues!). Rashi also cites an interpretation of Shemot 19:1 "On this day, they came to the wilderness of Sinai" which states that "on this day" is meant to remind us "that the words of Torah should be new in your eyes each day."

Continue reading.


Monday, January 13, 2014

Yitro

Exodus 18:1-20:23

"Hearing" the "Voice" of God


Rabbi Howard Cohen for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities
What does it mean to "hear" the commanding "voice" of God? A key word in this week's portion suggests that this is not necessarily all that clear. Moreover, one particularly trenchant verse in the haftarah reinforces the problem with understanding revelation (which I am equating with the notion of hearing the commanding voice of God).

After three days of preparing for an event to occur on Mount Sinai Moshe gathered the people together at the foot of the mountain. The summit became engulfed in a furious storm of lightening, clouds and thunder. "The whole mountain trembled violently". Moshe began to speak to God: "The blare of the shofar grew louder and louder: As Moshe spoke, God answered him...". - Before preceding a speculative question: What do you think Moshe was saying to God at that moment? Continuing: The word that the Torah tells us that God answered Moshe with is richly ambiguous. That word is "kol" which literally means a 'voice', 'thunder' or a 'sound'. At this critical juncture of communications between God, Moshe and the Israelites we are left wondering what exactly was heard!

Some have maintained that what Moshe heard was the sound of thunder, which was tantamount to hearing God's voice, as suggested in psalm 18:14 where it says "the Lord thundered from Heaven". His gift of prophecy, if you will, was the ability to "hear" within the sound that everyone else heard as thunder, the "voice of God" and translate this into words, more specifically into the Ten Commandments which immediately follow. (See Seek My Face, Speak My Name, by Art Green, p. 109, for more on this idea).

If Moshe "heard" in the thunder the revolutionary Ten Commandments what meaning of did everyone else take away from this encounter? I think that the haftarah suggests an answer to this question: Hear again and again - but without understanding; Look again and again - but without perceiving. Dull this people's mind, stop its ears and cloud its eyes, or it may see with its eyes and hear with its ears and understand with its mind. Isaiah 6:9 - 10.

In short, they failed to understand the meaning or message of the "voice of God"! To them it was just thunder. But why not? If they are like most us, would they not expect to "hear the voice of God" speaking to them in a familiar language? On some level, do we not expect to literally hear the voice of God as if it were the result of the same mechanics and physics that produce our voices? How often have we failed to hear or understand the "voice of God" speaking to us through nature; or human acts of courage,
kindness, and compassion; or through poetic, musical, and other ingenious human acts of creation; or through scientific inspiration? What is it, in the words of Isaiah, that dulls minds, stops up ears or clouds eyes and results in hearing without understanding and seeing without perceiving?

I am not sure whether it is humbling or comforting to realize that we (or shall I speak only in the first person and say I) suffer from the same kind of difficulties discerning God's voice in the world around me as the Israelites did in the time of Moshe and again hundreds of years later in the time of Isaiah.

Monday, January 6, 2014

B'shalach

Exodus 13:17−17:16

It's Reassuring: Number of Jews Can Increase as Well as Shrink


The other day I had a call from a wonderfully eccentric cousin who is always concocting one scheme or another to save the Jews. Particularly perplexed by the latest release of the National Jewish Population Study, my cousin's imagination was working overtime to figure out how to "replace" the 300,000 Jews "lost" between 1990 and 2000. Reminiscent of Rabbi Alex Schindler's push in the Reform movement to present Judaism as an attractive option to the "unchurched," my cousin began to think of intensive Jewish immersion experiences for non-Jews.

This all sounded quite radical, yet strangely reflective of a thread of Parshat b'Shalach. The Me'am Loez commentary has numerous comments to make about the erev rav, the mixed multitude who accompanied the Israelites as they left Egypt.

Rabbi Jacob Culi, for instance, wonders whether they really were Pharaoh's motivation for repenting of his promise to let the Israelites go. He could dismiss the Israelites' devotion to God. They, after all, were "born" into the traditions of Israel. But that Egyptians would take on the traditions of Israel maddens Pharaoh to no end.

One wonders what kind of spiritual incubation could so quickly convert so many of the erev rav into resolute Israelites? A range of possibilities exist.

Perhaps the most obvious explanation is that the dramatic Exodus story had its intended effect on these marginal residents of Egypt. Clearly, it was better to be on the side of the Israelite God if he could outperform the Egyptian deities so decisively.

Me'am Loez countenances another possibility. Namely, that the erev rav was well aware of the wealth the Israelites took with them from Egypt. Perhaps they could share in that wealth.

Finally, one might surmise, as I believe both my cousin and Rabbi Alex Schindler would want to believe, that the practice of Jewish tradition was inherently rich and compelling for non-Jews with transitional identities.

Surely, for Jacob Culi, who witnessed so many Jews leaving Judaism in droves in the post-Shabbtai Zvi era, there must have been something reassuring that Jewish numbers could grow as well as shrink. Perhaps it can also provide some perspective that keeps our present consternation about losing Jewish numbers from becoming crippling.

Reprinted by permission of the Cleveland Jewish News.

This dvar Torah is one of a series influenced by the Me'am Loez Sephardic Torah commentary. Author: Rabbi Jeffrey Schein