Scrollers Preview - Parashat Lech L'cha

The Etz Hayyim commentary distinguishes between God’s first two attempts, through Adam/Eve and then Noah and his family, to create humankind so that they will choose to do good, and this new attempt, through Abram and Sarai (later known as Abraham and Sarah.) According to the commentary, in this Parasha, God “now changes the approach. Instead of asking one individual or one family to be good in isolation, God seeks to create a community, a people, descendants of a God-fearing couple, in the hope that the members of that community would sustain and reinforce each other. In that way, ordinary people would be capable of displaying extraordinary behavior.”

This is a powerful assertion, that a community is what is needed for good values to endure in the world. As we study together, I want us to ask ourselves if this communal aspect is what distinguishes the covenant with Abraham from God’s relationships with Adam and Noah and the other false starts in the beginning of the Torah. How is asking Abram to “go forth” from his native land and his father’s house to the land that God will show him qualitatively different from God’s choosing of Noah or God’s creation of Adam?

We are presented with a series of covenantal moments in this parasha –from the creepy scene of the covenant between the pieces to the name changes of Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah, to the commandment to circumcise all males. How do these encounters between God and humans lay the groundwork for a community that will, as the commentary says, “sustain and reinforce each other” that “ordinary people would be capable of displaying extraordinary behavior”?

We will also read about Sarah giving her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abraham to have a child through her, and about Hagar’s subsequent banishment. As well, we will read about Abraham’s passing Sarah off as his sister in Egypt, and about Abraham’s participation in a war between two groups of kings. If this parasha is about a particular covenantal community, what is the text saying about other communities with whom we interact?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Noah

Scrollers Preview

Parashat Noah

Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

In the Women’s Torah Commentary, feminist scholar Tikvah Frymer-Kensky writes that the biblical flood is not primarily a punishment but “a means of getting rid of the thoroughly polluted world and starting again with a well-washed one.” Throughout our parasha, we find the Hebrew root “macha,” which means “to erase.” God wants to start over again with a clean slate.

But the thing is, God doesn’t really start over with a clean slate. Yes, the polluted world is “thoroughly washed,” and all that has life-breath on the earth is killed off. But God preserves the source of the pollution by piling Noah and his family and representatives of all creatures  into the Ark. God admits that the “the devisings of the human mind are evil from his youth,” yet God doesn’t completely rid the earth of us. God could have decided to completely erase and truly start over, but God doesn’t do this.

Instead, God preserves humanity in the same form that God originally created us. The new element that God introduces is a new covenant – a pact with humanity that God will never again destroy the world with a flood, and that humans will be held accountable for their propensity for violence and their spilling of innocent blood. Does being created in God’s image mean that humans will necessarily have that propensity for violence? Has God become more self-aware about God’s propensity for violence?

I look forward to swimming in the deep waters of this text with you tomorrow!

Shabbat Shalom

Scrollers Preview - V'zot Ha-B'rachah

Shabbat Shalom everyone! Just a head’s up that if the weather is dry tomorrow morning, we will hold our Scrollers session in our beautiful Sukkah, in honor of the holiday. Also, I will begin our session with a quick conversation about this group hosting an Oneg Shabbat. The Membership committee is inviting various synagogue groups to take responsibility for hosting one Friday night Oneg during the year.

On the Shabbat during the intermediate days of Sukkot, we traditionally are supposed to read a passage from Exodus. Over the years I alternated between studying that passage and the final Parasha of the Torah, V’zot Ha-Brachah. This year I thought we would do V’Zot Ha-brachah. This final passage of the Torah does not have a Shabbat assigned to it. On Simchat Torah, we traditionally read it and then go back to Breishit, the beginning of the Torah. However, we don’t always have a chance to study it. We will also take a look at the Haftarah for Simchat Torah, which is the first part of the Book of Joshua.

With these readings, we complete the story and the life of Moses, with his final blessing of the tribes, his death and his burial.  And then, with the haftarah, we gain a sense of continuity, as the Israelites accepts Joshua as their new leader, and they prepare to finally cross the Jordan river into the Land of Israel.

After last week’s poem of Moses, which is full of warnings of the People’s future straying and punishment, we get some more poetry here. But this time, the poetry is full of hope and blessing for success and fertility and security in the land. We also have a chance to mourn Moses’ death, and to read about his burial.

As we read, I want us to think about our relationship to Moses, personally and communally. How would we want to remember him after his burial. How do we see him? At the end of his life, he blesses the tribes as a patriarch from Genesis would bless his own children. Do we see Moses as a parental figure? Or, is he something wholly other than that – a singular prophet – the only one who ever knew God face to face?