Scrollers Preview - Parashat Tetzaveh 2013

Parashat Tetzaveh continues the theme from last week with God setting up the infrastructure and the staff for the priestly rituals of sacrifice. Last week we received the instructions for building the Tabernacle – God’s dwelling place (mishkan) among the Israelites. This week we receive instructions for the vestments of the priests and the ritual of ordaining them. We also get the instructions for the lighting of the menorah and the building of the incense altar.

Here we begin to get a sense of God’s plan for how the Israelites will make it possible to have a close relationship with God and how they will carry out Divine service through the sacrificial rituals.

Some of the questions on my mind this week are:

What does it mean to have God’s Presence abide among the people, and what can we deduce from the parashah about the nature of the connection between the people and God’s Presence? What does it mean to connect to God through these priests and these offerings of animals and grains and incense?

I plan on having us read the haftarah from the prophet Ezekiel as well. He is addressing the people in Babylon.  They have witnessed the destruction of the Temple and their sacrificial worship system, and they are now living in exile. In this prophecy, Ezekiel gives detailed instructions for the reconstruction and restoration of the Temple upon the people’s return to the Land of Israel.

The haftarah raises a number of questions. What do we think it meant to experience the destruction of the Temple and to lose the ability to connect with God via the sacrifices? What might it have felt like to hear Ezekiel describe the dimensions and materials to be used to rebuild the Temple, in exile? How might simply hearing his words or reading the passage effect a sense of closeness to God or restoration of the relationship that was once lost?

After the destruction of the 2^nd Temple, the rabbis posit that studying words of Torah does the same thing that sacrifices did when they had the Temple. Is the text enough to create that connection, or do we need the actual sacrificial system?

Shabbat Shalom everyone! I’m looking forward to studying together tomorrow morning.

And don’t forget that Purim begins tomorrow evening. We have our carnival at 4pm and shpiel at 5:30pm. There will be food and wine available for purchase at the carnival, so you can come and eat and then enjoy “Chelm and its Hat: How simple is that!” – an intergenerational production of the Megilah of Esther, with twist of Dr. Seuss and a sprinkle of Chelm. It should be really fun…and hamentaschen afterwards! 

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Yitro 2013

This week our People encounter God at Mount Sinai. They hear God’s voice directly for the first time as a people, and they enter into the covenant as a whole community, becoming God’s “am segullah,” or “treasured people.” Because the experience is so intense, the people are afraid, and they are only able to handle hearing the first ten utterances. Moses will take down the rest of God’s laws and relay them to the people.

In the JPS commentary, scholar Nahum Sarna writes about what makes the covenantal moment at Sinai unique among other Near Eastern covenantal documents. In the ancient world, there are many instances of covenants, testaments, and treaties between parties. But ours is the only example of a covenant made between God and an entire people.

Another feature that sets our text apart is that the covenant is made in the context of a larger narrative. We don’t just have a document listing the laws and rules we are to follow so that we might be God’s treasured people. We have these laws and rules and agreements within the context of a larger story – our dramatic story of liberation from slavery and revelation of God’s presence at Mount Sinai.

The Decalogue (which we often call the Ten Commandments) is revealed in a mystical immediate intense moment in time that is etched into the memory of our People from that moment forward. Our tradition asks us to imagine that we were all there – those of us yet to be born along with our ancestors of old. This story is read by later generations as an event that is out of time, transcendent, eternal.

Later rabbis, especially in the Chasidic tradition, put more importance on the moment of our people experiencing God’s presence than on the content of the ten utterances themselves.

As we study this parasha together, I want us to consider how the context of this narrative shapes how we understand its content. What is more important – the direct experience of God by the people or the list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”? Do we agree with our Chasidic masters that really all we heard was God’s name? Or even just the “aleph” in the first word if the first phrase, “Anochi Adonai Elohecha,” “I am the Eternal your God”?