Thoughts on Passover

Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Circles and Cycles: The Never-Ending Cycle of the Jewish Year

Last month we celebrated Purim with joy and abandon. This week we rejoice in freedom and redemption with a mixture of celebration and serious contemplation. As we sat at the seder table this past week we hopefully pondered what freedom truly means to us. Tradition also teaches that as we experience our freedom we must also ask ourselves what it means that others, like the Egyptians in the sea, must often suffer or die for our redemption. Next month we will once again stand together filled with awe and trepidation at the foot of Mount Sinai as we receive the word of God that is meant to guide our lives on Shavuot (the festival that traditionally celebrates that seminal event in the Torah). And so the cycle continues each and every year.

Like our lives, the Jewish year is a never-ending cycle. Of course, one might say that there is a major difference. After all, the days, months, years and holidays repeat every year without change. By comparison, our lives seem more linear to us. We progress from moment to moment, day to day, and so on in a straight line. We never return back from where we began. Or do we?

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Shabbat HaGadol/The Great Sabbath; Tzav

Leviticus 6:1-8:36

Rabbi Jeffrey Schein for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

The Ascending Heart

A colleague of mine once summarized the inner power of Judaism in the following way: Judaism challenges us "to ethicize ritual, and ritualize ethics." Last week in this column we had a chance to explore what might be problematic in 20th/21st century Jewish life when ethics were stripped of ritual richness. This week, in parashat Tzav we see the opposite dynamic at work: the ethicizing of ritual.

Sacrifices of the Heart

Yitzhak Magriso begins by asking why the phrase for one particular kind of sacrifice - an olah (burnt offering; literally a "going upward") - is often repeated twice when a single olah would have sufficed syntactically. The answer Me'am Loez provides is to suggest that one olah is a physical description of the burnt animal's smoky ascent to heaven. But a second "olah" is also happening within the heart of the person bringing the sacrifice.

We all have evil thoughts that seem to rise to consciousness unpredictably. With the right kavana (intentionality), the upward ascent of the sacrifice can-Yom Kippur like-atone for the straying heart and mind.

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Shabbat HaHodesh; Vayikra

Leviticus 1:1−5:26; Maftir: Exodus 12:1-20

Ellen Dannin for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Drawing Close to Sacrifice

When Adar comes in, our happiness is increased. But when Vayikra comes in, we feel as if the Promised Land of great stories and heroes is far, far away.

Torah scholars through the centuries have tried to give us reasons to rejoice in these endless passages on the most minute and bloody details of sacrifices, but it is hard to say they have succeeded. Some point out that we are moving from a physical to a spiritual journey. After all, the book begins with the words "And God called." Called - not just spoke.

Others point out how the details of ritual sacrifice were transformed so that Judaism and the Jewish people were able to survive thousands of years without a temple. Reconstructionist prayers have embraced this break by eliminating prayers for the restoration of the temple sacrifices.

But let me suggest a wholly different way of approaching these very difficult passages. Try embracing them. Try taking on the feeling of what it means to be living in a society in which this is the form worship takes. After all, this form of worship, using sacrifices as its center, has had a long history of success. It must offer people something for this to be the case. Use these weekly parshiot to explore what that might be.

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Shabbat Parah; Vayak'heil/P'kudei

Exodus 35:1–40:38

Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Reconstructing the Prohibitions of Shabbat

In this week's parashah, Vayakhel, as we near the conclusion of Shemot (which will take place next Shabbat), we read of Moses relaying God's instructions to the people concerning the building of the Mishkan/Mikdash (Tabernacle). In the earlier part of Shemot God gives Moses detailed instructions concerning the Mishkan/Mikdash which are followed by the commandment to observe Shabbat as a day of rest. This is followed by the incident of the Golden Calf, which is then followed in Vayakhel by a reminder to observe Shabbat, including the prohibition against kindling fire on Shabbat. Moses then transmits the instructions concerning the building of the Mishkan/Mikdash to the people and to Bezalel, the artisan entrusted with the actual construction.

Rashi (12th c. France) comments on the reminder that after six days of working we are required to rest on Shabbat by stating that God "prefaced the instructions about the Mishkan work with the warning about Shabbat, to tell them that the Mishkan does not supercede Shabbat." As Aviva Zornberg then states in her analysis (The Particulars of Rapture, p. 462) "an intimate tension is set up between Shabbat and the Mishkan: before even beginning to speak of the building work, it is necessary to articulate a kind of 'anti-Mishkan' principle. One might indeed have thought that the Mishkan does displace Shabbat, that that the crafts that go to create the holy space would continue through the weekly day of sacred [or holy] time. Therefore Moses speaks of Shabbat before the Mishkan work, to counteract perhaps a natural hypothesis." Furthermore, Zornberg reminds her readers that the beginning of the verses concerning the building of the Mishkan begin with the words 'eileh ha-devarim' (these are the things) the 39 letters of this phrase are viewed by the Sages as pointing to the 39 categories of work involved in the building of the Mishkan which then become the 39 categories of work forbidden on Shabbat.

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Ki Tisa

Exodus 30:11 - 34:35

Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Two Sides of the Golden Calf

This week's parashah, Ki Tisa, includes the narrative of the Golden Calf. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, according to rabbinic tradition the incident of the calf is contiguous with the giving of the Ten Commandments and precedes the giving of the instructions for the building of the Mishkan/Tabernacle. Sinai and the Golden Calf are inextricably linked to one another. Sinai represents the creation of a relationship between the people of Israel and God. The Golden Calf represents, among other things, their refusal to totally let go of their past and also their inability to maintain their commitment to one concept, symbol or ideal if their patience is tested. In short, Sinai implies trust and the Golden Calf implies its rejection.

Aviva Zornberg discusses the fact that the two sides of the coin that is the Golden Calf may seem to be contradictory, yet are in reality complimentary, or perhaps even symbiotic.

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