Scrollers Preview - Shlach-L'cha 2013

 Spoiler alert! This week’s Parasha is a huge turning point in the Torah. God instructs Moses to send 12 scouts over the border into the Promised Land to check it out and bring back a report.

Their report strays from the facts and turns into what commentator Nechama Leibowitz calls propaganda. All because of a tiny little word… “but.”  “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. BUT the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the Anakites (giants) there. . . .” (Numbers 13:27-28)

This report raises the anxiety of the Israelites to such a level that Caleb and Joshua, two of the scouts, has to quiet them down, reassuring them that they can “surely overcome it.” But it is too late. The remaining scouts feed on the negativity and fear and begin to blow things out of proportion to the point that the Israelites are ready to turn around and head back to Egypt.

God’s initial response is similar to that following the Golden Calf incident. God wants to destroy the people and start all over with Moses. Moses intervenes and persuades God to pardon the sin of the people. But God does this only on condition that all Israelite adults will be barred from entering the Land. They will be forced to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the entire generation that knew Egyptian slavery dies off.

What struck me this year was the sense of futility. We began the Book of Numbers with a census of all adults from the age of twenty years and older, as the Israelites prepare to enter and conquer the Land. And now, God instructs Moses to go back through that census and take note that none of those recorded, except for Caleb and Joshua, will enter the land. Only their children will be allowed to enter.

So many questions – There have been failures of faith before, but why now is the punishment so thorough and devastating? Why is there no forgiveness for this generation? Do we see in our own lives the potency of negative messages and information over and above optimism? Can there be times when a positive message overrides negativity and doubt?

Scrollers Preview - Parashat B'ha-alotecha 2013

Pull up a chair! This week’s Parasha is full of good stories.

First, we have a number of sections with instructions for various tasks related to the Tabernacle and the Israelites’ march through the desert. We have instructions for the installation of the Levites for their tasks in the Tabernacle.  Then we learn about Pesach sheini – the second Pesach designated for folks who happened to be in a state of ritual impurity for the Pesach at its regularly scheduled time. Lastly,  we have God’s instructions to Moses to make two silver trumpets to direct the Israelites to assemble or to break camp and march.

And then we get a series of episodes. The first tells of the riffraff who crave meat, which leads all of the Israelites to whine and complain about how they miss the delicious food in Egypt. God and Moses are fed up with the people at this point. God sends enough meat to make a person nauseous, and then kills many people with a plague.

Then we have a story about the delegation and spreading around of Moses’ power. Similar to an episode in the book of Exodus, here, God draws from the spirit that is upon Moses and puts it upon 70 elders.

Lastly, we have the story of Aaron and Miriam questioning Moses’ marriage to a Cushite woman and questioning the primacy of his leadership. Miriam is punished with tzara-at (white scaly skin…)

At least regarding the last three episodes, this parasha focuses a lot on Moses and his style of leadership. In the last episode, the narrator of the Torah comments that Moses Moses was “a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth.” Perhaps we can spend some time thinking about what humility means to us and what role humility plays in good leadership.

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Tazria-Metzora 2013

 Ah yes, laws about skin diseases, menstruation,  irregular bleeding and discharge…lovely stuff!

Now that I have your attention, don’t forget that after Scrollers tomorrow we have our 2^nd Saturday Shabbat service and pot-luck Kiddush lunch. We’ll be honoring Phyllis Ross, and our Torah readers are three Scrollers – Kevin Fox, David Tilles and Rita Christopher!

Okay - back to the preview. This week’s double Torah portion deals mostly with the issue of ritual purity and impurity. As we have already explored in our discussions on Leviticus, in order to be able to come close to God and offer a sacrifice through the priests at the Tabernacle, the individual had to be in a state of ritual purity. Things that would make a person impure were things like touching a dead body, having sex, giving birth, and having the skin disease called “tzara-at.”

As I have emphasized in previous sessions, being impure didn’t mean that you did anything bad or wrong or that you were somehow dirty. You became impure by doing things necessary for life, and often joyful. Being impure meant that you had been in contact with the intensity of life through birth, burial of the dead, or certain kinds of illness. In fact, the ways in which you became impure probably brought you into close contact with God as well. But in order to come close to God through the specific ritual of sacrifice, you had to go through a ritual that got rid of your impurity and made you ritually pure again.

This week’s Torah portions focus on various sources of impurity, how to manage the period of impurity, and how to return to a state of purity again. One of the potentially troubling ways a person becomes impure is through childbirth. The first parasha, Tazria, opens by stating that a woman who gives birth to a male child is impure for seven days and then must remain in a state of “blood purification” for 33 days. If she bears a female, these time periods of impurity double in length. As part of returning to  a state of purity, the woman has to bring a chattat offering, usually understood as a sin offering, and a burnt offering.

Commentators spill a lot of ink explaining why it is that the woman who just gave birth must bring a “sin” offering and why the birth of a girl increases the period of impurity. We will study some of these texts together and explore whether we think the Torah is being sexist here, or if there may be a deeper spiritual message behind these rules, or if we think that the deeper spiritual reasons are merely apologetics so that we can more easily swallow these regulations.

Looking forward to studying  with you tomorrow morning!

 

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?