Purim is coming - at Scrollers, we'll study the Book of Esther!

On Shabbat morning, we will only be hours away from the Eve of Purim. To get us into the festive mood, we will be studying the Megilah of Esther rather than the Torah portion of the week. I know what you're thinking....the Rabbi is just looking for an excuse to avoid another week on Leviticus...and....you're RIGHT!! Instead, let's read a story of a woman who refuses to dance for her drunken husband, a comic king, a dastardly villain, and a couple of Diaspora superJews!

Please note: We will be making photocopies of the text for everyone. However, I don't want to waste too much paper, so folks will have to share. If you happen to have your own copy of an English translation of the Tanach (Hebrew Bible), please bring it with you.

And, don't forget to plan to attend our Adult Purim celebration and shpiel on Saturday night. Hard and soft drinks and savory hamentaschen start at 7pm, the shpiel (featuring many of our Scroller friends) begins at 8:15pm.

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Vayakhel 2014

In his introduction to this week’s parasha, Everett Fox writes, “As if nothing had gone awry, the narrative now returns to describe how the Dwelling was built.” Last week, the covenantal relationship between God and Israel is on the brink of destruction when the Israelites turn away from God to worship the golden calf. And this week, the narrative just picks up where it left off. Now that Moses has all of the instructions for the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle,) he assembles the entire community and sends them off to bring back donations of all of the materials to being the building project. The people enthusiastically bring gifts of gold, yarn, cloth and wood. They are so enthusiastic, in fact, that they bring too much, and Moses has to tell them to stop.

An academic approach would probably lead us to posit that the golden calf narrative comes from a source different from the source of the Tabernacle-building narrative. The editor then decided to place the golden calf story in the middle of the Tabernacle-building narrative. This answer may satisfy our logical minds.

However, the editor must have had a reason for juxtaposing these two narratives. The juxtaposition raises fundamental questions about the relationship between the material and spiritual. What makes a golden calf a problem, when the construction of an elaborate Tabernacle, using expensive materials, is a mitzvah? Why is it okay to have a dwelling place as the “icon” that points us towards God? Is there something about this that is particularly Jewish as opposed to having a sculpture point us towards God?

A Chasidic teaching, which we will look at together, suggests that God is very particular about this balance between the material and spiritual. Both are important for humans to be able to serve the Divine. However, the material aspect can’t exceed the spiritual aspect even by a hair’s breadth.  Otherwise, the spiritual is in danger of being obscured by the material. This is why, when the Israelites bring gifts for the building of the Mishkan, it is problematic when they become so enthusiastic that they bring too much. The tendency, in the material realm, is to think that bigger is better. But here, God insists on limiting the size and ostentation of the Tabernacle in order to have the right-sized container for the Shechina down here on earth.

Scrollers Prevew - Parsashat Ki Tissa 2014

“You know that breaking up. . . is. . . hard to do! Now I know, I know that it’s tru-ue.” (I had to throw this in to prove that the generation gap at Scrollers isn’t THAT wide. Neil Sedaka 1962? Okay, I admit, I did google that fact.) But truly, ever since reading the parasha for this week, I haven’t been able to get this  song out of my head.

Our tradition often understands the meeting between God and the people Israel at Mount Sinai as a wedding, and the story of the ongoing relationship as a love story. But this is not some Disney love story. Ours is more like a soap opera. We have huge ups and huge downs in this relationship. In terms of where we are now in the Book of Exodus, the people and God have just sealed their covenant. Moses has been up on the mountain receiving detailed instructions for how we will construct the Tabernacle – God’s home on earth where God’s Presence will dwell among the Israelites. We have spent several chapters answering the question “Is God indeed among us?” with a resounding, “YES!” God is about to officially move in!

And this week it all threatens to fall apart. While Moses is up on the mountain, the people become impatient, and the impatience quickly turns to desperation. They are lost – they feel that without Moses among them, they have no connection to God. And so they ask Aaron to make them a god. Aaron molds a golden calf, and the Israelites worship it. God sends Moses back down to check things out.

Moses and God are not happy. The covenant is in great danger. Divorce is imminent. Moses smashes the tablets – the wedding contract.  He then strips the Israelites of their finery - their wedding apparel perhaps? God wants to kill all the people and start over with Moses.

BUT – as Neil Sedaka wisely teaches us – “breaking up is hard to do!” Moses goes back up the mountain to try and gain forgiveness. God relents the idea of killing the people but announces that God’s Presence will no longer be among the people, leading them to the Promised Land. Moses can’t accept this and finally persuades God to stick with the people. By the end of the parasha, not only has God relented the punishment, but God has also given Moses a more intimate experience of who God is. Moses is placed in the cleft of the rock as God passes by and proclaims the 13 attributes of mercy and compassion. God has shown Godself to Moses more directly than God has before or ever will again to any prophet in our tradition.

And so we ask this week – what is it about almost reaching the breaking point that brings us even closer together? How is it that after a fight, the lovers are even more in love than before?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat T'rumah 2014

One third of the Book of Exodus is dedicated to the instructions for and the actual construction of the Tabernacle, or as the Torah calls it, the “mishkan,” or “dwelling place.” In his introduction to this section of the book, Everett Fox lays out the many reasons for Exodus’ emphasis on this highly detailed account of the building of the dwelling place for God. One reason he gives is that a great theme of this book is the question, posed by the Israelites in 17:7 – “Is YHWH in our midst or not?” And here, the answer is clearly, “YES!”

So, yes, God is in our midst. And this parasha describes the environment we are to create in order for God to dwell with us. We will contemplate the qualities of the Mishkan and wonder together about what the design says about how we understand our relationship with the Divine. We will wonder together about why God’s presence and voice moves from the boundary-breaking thunderous mountain of Sinai to a little gold box, the ark, contained in a tent within a tent. We will wonder at the beauty and expense of the materials, the symmetry and pleasing-ness of the dimensions, and ask why such a humble abode – a tent? Moreover, we will take note that this bridge between heaven and earth is not firmly planted in one location. It moves with the Israelites from camp to camp.

We will ask - what in this highly detailed third of the Book of Exodus –the book that recounts how we became US – speaks to us? And we will also look at the Chasidic master Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman’s answer to that question as well.

Looking forward to wondering along with all of you tomorrow!

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Mishpatim 2014

Last week’s meeting between the Israelites and God was full of ambiguity. The text was chaotic, likely a weaving together of more than one account, and by the end of our discussion, we still weren’t sure of what exactly the people had witnessed. The most concrete aspect of the revelation was the ten utterances, or the Ten Commandments, themselves. These basic laws establish God’s expectations of the people if they are to uphold the covenant.

In this week’s parasha, we get even more concrete. Ostensibly, Moses is still up on Mount Sinai, and God proceeds to tell Moses, “Now these are the mishpatim, the regulations, that you are to set before them.” And what we have are a series of very specific laws regulating everything from how we are to treat our Hebrew indentured servants to injury, accidental and intentional killing of another person, to how we are to treat the poor, to public safety and property, to the rituals of the pilgrimage festivals.

The parasha comes to its end, first with some very Deuteronomic sounding language about what will happen if we do follow the laws and what will happen if we don’t. Then there is a covenant cutting or sealing ceremony in which Moses writes down and then reads the terms of the covenant to the people and then sprinkles blood on them. And the parasha ends with Moses, Aaron, Nadav and Avihu and seventy elders going up the mountain where they see God and have a meal.

This parasha is not as scary or chaotic as last week’s. It makes more sense to our rational minds. However, it is not devoid of feeling or even of spirituality. Here we have the spirituality of the every day – the ways in which we will keep the relationship with God front and center in our mundane activities. The regulations are not just dry lists of what to do and what not to do. The rhetoric taps into our historical experience as slaves and strangers and landless, poor marginal people to provide a deep motivation for following these rules. We are not to mistreat the stranger, because we know the heart of the stranger, having been strangers in the Land of Egypt.

As we study together, I want us to think about these two different types of spirituality – the transcendent, other-worldly Sinai moments and these grounded, this-worldly, mundane moments. Which way of connecting to God works for you?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Yitro 2014

Covenants abound in the ancient Near East, with kings making pacts with vassals and with other kings. But as far as we know, no other ancient society other than Israel ever imagined a god entering into a covenant with a people. The heart of our parasha this week is the cutting of the covenant between God and our people at Mount Sinai. We’ve have covenantal moments before, in the Book of Genesis, between God and Noah, and then God and each of the patriarchs. But this is the first covenant in which both parties have a stake; this is the first one where, according to Everett Fox, “mutuality and conditionality” are a part of the deal.

The scene in which the covenant is made is one of revelation. Yet, this is not primarily a visual experience – it is an aural one. God speaks directly to Moses in the hearing of the people, out of a cloud of smoke atop a trembling mountain. Shofarot are blasting, and God’s words are heard above the noise.

The very moment of the people meeting God is described in only four verses. Yet many more verses are devoted to warnings about boundaries that the people must not overstep lest God “burst out” against them. And the balance of the parasha is made up of the laws that are revealed.

So, at the heart of the parasha is this moment of meeting, but it is only four verses long. What does this mean about how we are to understand our relationship with God? Is the experience of God’s presence more or less important than following the laws and sticking to the covenant? Why do we think that our ancient Israelite ancestors could imagine a covenant between a people and a god, when no one around them was doing this? What does this say about who we are and where we came from?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Bo 2014

At the beginning of this week’s Parasha, everyone seems to know and acknowledge that Egypt is “lost,” everyone except for Pharaoh himself, that is. As the plague of locusts is about to descend, even his advisors have the chutzpah to confront Pharaoh and ask why he continues to refuse to the let the Israelites go. By the end of the Parasha, as the great cry is heard throughout Egypt over the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh finally relents. As God had predicted, Pharaoh “drives” the Israelites out of Egypt.

Woven through the narrative of the last three plagues are instructions for the Pesach sacrifice and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These instructions are aimed at two audiences. First, they are meant for the Israelites in the story, the Pesach sacrifice being the source of the blood which, smeared on the doorposts, will protect them from the “Destroyer.” But these ritual instructions regarding the sacrifice of a lamb for each household and the seven day commandment to eat only unleavened bread are meant equally for the generations after the Exodus. The text makes explicit that these rituals are to become eternal reminders, passed down from parent to child. “And you are to tell you child on that day, saying: it is because of what God did for me, when I went out of Egypt.” (Exodus 13:8)

Woven through this narrative that is at the heart of our identity as Jews, we have here the first formally revealed laws in the Torah. And through the revelation of these laws, we are brought into the center of the story – it becomes ours.