Acharei Mot / K’doshim

 Leviticus 16:1-20:27

Ethical Mitzvot

Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Kedoshim is one of a series of three parashiot whose focus is the development of societal norms and the creation of what has come to be called the Holiness Code. The name of the parasha Kedoshim comes from the imperative with which it opens "You shall be holy people (kedoshim ti'hyu) for I the Eternal your God am holy." As beings created in the image of the Divine we are meant to be holy. The parasha explains what this means by listing numerous rules focusing on holy behavior within the framework of creating a new society. The central mitzvah of this parasha, indeed of the entire Torah, is "v'ahavta l'rayakha kamocha" - "you shall love your fellow human being as yourself." All of the mitzvot, as arcane and absurd as some of them may seem to us today, are meant to teach us how to treat others with love as fellow human beings created in the image of God.

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Tazria/Metzora

Leviticus 12:1-15:33

By Aaron Seidman for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Does Historical Accuracy of Religious Texts Matter?

This week's Sedra is Metzora, from the opening lines of the second verse: "tihyeh torat metzora" - "This shall be the teaching about the metzora."

The metzora was someone afflicted with a skin problem. Although 'metzora' has been translated as leprosy, it is clear from the symptoms described in the text that it was a variety of ailments other than Hansen's disease -- "true" leprosy. This instruction, according to the text, takes place in the wilderness, where the Israelites are camped, after leaving Mitzraim and experiencing revelation at Sinai. In fact, it is likely that this is something that was added to the text after the core of the Exodus story was recorded.

Most biblical scholars, except Jewish Orthodox and Christian Fundamentalists, have recognized for a long time that the bible is composed of multiple sources, written and edited over many centuries. The text we have was put into final form at Yavneh, late in the first century of the common era. It was long assumed that it was based on older manuscripts and oral traditions that went far back into antiquity.

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Shemini

Leviticus 9:1-11:47

Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Strange Fire ... a Midrashic Reconstruction on Nadav and Avihu

The parashah this week is Shemini. Instead of a traditional d'var Torah I am sharing with all of you an original midrash I wrote about Nadav and Avihu. These two sons of Aaron, the High Priest, after seeing Divine fire come down from heaven and devour the first sacrifice made in the newly-dedicated Mishkan (Sanctuary), decide to take matters into their own hands. They bring a "strange fire" before God, that God had not commanded them, and their punishment was that they were then devoured by Divine fire. The rabbis have commented on this for years, questioning whether Nadav and Avihu were simply brash, arrogant upstarts, or if perhaps there was another reason.

I like to think of Nadav and Avihu as the first Reconstructionists.

Unfortunately, they were a little ahead of their time and so they suffered the consequences. Once you read my midrash you'll understand why I say this.

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A New Twist on the Omer

By Elliot Skiddell, Rabbi of Beth Emeth Reconstructionist Synagogue of Rockville Centre, NY [The Voice Inside My Head]

On the second night of Pesach [Passover] it is a tradition to begin the countdown of 49 days until the holiday of Shavuot.  This tradition is known as Counting the Omer since, in ancient times, this was the period of the Spring grain harvest and an Omer is a measure of grain.  Our agricultural ancestors were filled with anxiety during this period of seven weeks from Pesach to Shavuot, uncertain how the harvest would be.  In the Land of Israel – as in North America – the weather during this period is unstable, it is a time of transition and each day’s weather is unpredictable. Most of us, living in suburbs and cities, are not attuned to the agricultural cycles, but we sill pay attention to the weather reports so we know how to dress in the morning and can make our weekend plans.  Our fellow Americans in the Midwest, the South, the West and all areas where farming is a more prevalent way of life than here in the commercialized Northeast are more cognizant of meteorological phenomena such as drought or Spring floods. Maybe we should pay more attention, though, because the weather “out there” has a direct impact on our tables and our pocketbooks.  Drought in California means higher prices for fruit and vegetables, floods in the Midwest mean an increase in the price of bread and frost in Florida means our morning OJ will cost more.  How can we transform the ancient ritual of the Omer, the ceremonial grain offering brought to the Temple, to have meaning for our modern world?  I want to suggest that we take time to think about where our food comes from and offer prayers of thanks to those who provide our daily bread.  I also want to ask us all to think of those who are deeply affected when food prices rise.  Most of us don’t feel the impact of the cost of bread or our morning cereal going up, but there are too many among us who will face hard choices when a box of cornflakes costs more than it did a week ago.  We can bring our grain offerings, just as our ancestors did, by bringing boxes of cereal, bags of rice, barley and other grain based foods for the food pantry.  Let that be our Counting of the Omer!

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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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