Scrollers Preview - Parashat Shemini 2013

This week’s Parasha can be divided into two sections.

In the first section, Aaron offers his very first sacrifices, and everything works beautifully. At the end of Chapter 9, The Presence of God appears to the people, and fire comes forth from before God and consumes the sacrifices on the altar.

But then, in Chapter 10, everything goes wrong. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Abihu, offer “alien” or “strange” fire to God. Fire again comes forth from before God, but this time it consumes these two men and kills them.

Then, in Chapter 11, we find the laws explaining which animals we are allowed to eat and which are prohibited.

One theme that runs through the parasha is that of coming close to God. How do we come close, but not too close? What are the boundaries we need to draw around ourselves in order to live as a holy community, close to God? Why do we need these boundaries?

In Exodus, the encounter with God at Mount Sinai was a one-time intense experience of being in the Presence of God. There too we had boundaries around the mountain, we had to be pure to come close, there were limitations on who could get closest, and there was danger in coming too close. Here in Leviticus we’re talking more about a normative experience of living in community with God on a daily basis.

The Haftarah picks up on this theme of boundaries and danger involved in having God in our midst. There we read about the transport of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. And there too, there is a tension between wanting God to have a permanent dwelling place among the people and the sense that God “moves about” in a portable shrine. Again, we confront the questions of what it means to have God in our midst. Is it better to have a permanent temple to which people must make pilgrimage, or a traveling Tent that comes to the people where they live? Here too, we have danger associated with having God’s Presence so near. Uzzah, who is guiding the ox cart which conveys the Ark, reaches out to steady it as one of the oxen stumbles. God strikes him down on the spot.

Looking forward to exploring this with you tomorrow!

Scrollers Preview - Shabbat Chol Ha Moed Pesach

Moadim L’simcha! (may the intermediate days of this Pesach festival be joyous!)

This week we take a break from the weekly Torah portion cycle to read selections chosen for the Shabbat during the intermediate days of Pesach (Passover.)

From Torah we read Exodus 33:12-34:26, which is the account of Moses persuading God to forgive the people after the sin of the Golden Calf. This section includes God’s putting Moses in the cleft of the rock and passing by which declaring the 13 attributes of God’s mercy. It also includes laws of the Passover festival.

In the Haftarah, we read Ezekiel 37:1-14, which is the well-known vision of the dry bones assembling themselves, growing flesh, and coming back to life.

And the Megilah, or scroll from the Writings, is Song of Songs. Song of Songs is a cycle of beautiful love poetry with springtime motifs.

As we study together, we’ll look at each of these sources as well as some Midrash and liturgical texts and explore themes of resurrection, renewal and rebirth. Yes – resurrection is a Jewish concept! And it is a perfect theme as the green shoots finally begin to poke out of the cold ground.

Scrollers Preview - Tzav 2013

Scrollers Preview

Parashat Tzav 2013

Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

Leviticus can feel so foreign to us, and this Torah portion is no exception. Whereas in last week’s parasha we learned about the purpose of each type of sacrifice, this week we read more of a manual for the priests, outlining how to conduct the ritual of each sacrifice.

We learn which portions of the sacrifice are burned up completely, which portions the priests consume, and which portions the Israelite bringing the sacrifice would consume. This week we find the prohibition against consuming blood or fat, a rule we see repeatedly throughout the Torah. And we read the instructions for the ordination of the priests. The story of the first ordination of the first priests and the actual initiation of the sacrificial system will come in next week’s parasha.

Over the years, I have found that when I come back to these sections of Torah, I feel closer and closer to them. They make more and more sense to me the more I explore them. I also feel a sense of gratitude that we have this Torah which captures this ancient way our people had of connecting to God. Now that it’s gone, we at least have this record. So, as we study this week, I want us to try to wrap our heads around this ritual that no longer exists. Before judging it, I want us to try and understand this system and what it must have meant to those who participated in it and those who facilitated it.

Then, we will turn to the Haftarah from Jeremiah, who does judge this system very harshy and who asserts that God never meant for us to engage in sacrificial worship. Jeremiah opens by instructing the people to, “add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat!”, an act which would desecrate the sacrifices mentioned.

According to the introduction in Etz Hayyim:

. . . it is best to follow those commentators who regard Jeremiah’s words as an altogether ironic “instruction,” implying that the people may as well desecrate the burnt offering (olah) for all that it is worth, because God did not command them about burnt offerings or sacrifices during the wilderness sojourn.

So many questions!

Did God ever want us to worship through sacrifice? Is Jeremiah unaware of the book of Leviticus, or is he rebelling against it? Why did our people cling to this sacrificial system for so long, even as the prophets were announcing that God did not want them anymore?

Scrollers Preview - Ki Tissa 2013

The focus of this week’s parasha is the episode of the Golden Calf. The Israelites have been waiting for weeks for Moses to come back down the mountain. Their patience wears out, and they prevail upon Aaron to “make us a god who shall go before us.” The result is the construction of a molten calf around which the Israelites celebrate and offer sacrifices. As you might imagine, God and Moses are not pleased!

God’s response is (after sending a plague to kill off the guilty ones) to allow Moses to continue leading the people forward. But God will no longer be in their midst. The entire enterprise of the Mishkan – of having God dwell among the people – seems to be falling apart.

Ultimately, Moses is able to convince God to stick with the people. But Moses needs reassurance from God in order to continue with this journey. Moses wants to “know” God’s ways. God’s response to this is to reveal God’s self to Moses in a an intimate and mysterious scene. God places Moses in the cleft of a rock, and God’s Presence passes by while God pronounces God’s attributes of mercy and compassion. Moses isn’t allowed to see God’s face – only God’s back.

The big questions I’m left with this week are – How is the yearning to experience God’s presence that the Israelites express (by asking Aaron to make them a god) any different from Moses’ yearning to know God’s ways? Why is it that God will show God’s self to Moses but not to the people?

It seems that the people and Moses are both looking for proof that God is with them. The Haftarah, from the Elijah cycle in I Kings, has a similar theme.

So – what then, is the role of proof when it comes to our ability to rely on God? Do we relate to the people’s need for some outward sign?

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”?