A Thought on the Parsha

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family: Click here:  Parshat Bamidbar

This week, when we move from sefer Vayikra to sefer Bamidbar, we are finally moving away from Har Sinai, where Bnei Yisrael have been encamped for almost a year. From the middle of Shemot through the end of Vayikra, they have been encamped at the foot of Har Sinai, having received the Torah, mitzvot and the laws, and then all the laws of the Kohanim, through Kedoshim and Behar Bichukotai. It is only because we lose sight of this that the opening of Behar takes us by surprise: "And the Lord spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai saying..." (Vayikra 25:1). "What," asks Rashi, and perhaps many of us as well, "does Shmitta have to do with Mt. Sinai?" The answer is obvious - because they are still there, they've been there since Matan Torah, and the parasha is reminding us of that, as the narrative comes to wrap up their experience at Har Sinai, and to transition to their moving forward, through the Wilderness, through the book of Bamidbar.

 

Now, this experience at the foot of Har Sinai can be likened to the period of the chuppah and the sheva b'rakhot.The moment of the giving of the Torah was the moment of marriage (nissuim). The intimacy, intensity, and immediacy of the connection and self-revelation that occurred between God and Bnei Yisrael is like the coming together of chatan and kallah, the consummation of the betrothal (kiddushin). In addition to the intensity of the love , the brit is actualized and the full obligations of the relationship are accepted -the mitzvot and the laws - with the sefer habrit, the book of the covenant that Moshe presents the Children of Israel (see Shemot 24:7), serving as the ketuvah, with all its reciprocal obligations.

 

Now, however, as we transition to Bamidbar, it is time to move away from the chuppah and to move on with our lives. The question will be - how has our life changed and how will we move forward?  This is the focus of the opening parasha - how to move through the desert without leaving Har Sinai behind.

 

The first step is arranging the camp and the tribes around the Mishkan.  Wherever we may camp, even when it is not at the foot of Har Sinai, the encampment must always be with the Mishkan in the center. Even when we break camp and move forward, the Mishkan must move in the center. This, indeed, was the point of building theMishkan: "They shall build Me a Sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst" (Shemot 25:8). God dwells in our midst when the Mishkan is kept in our midst, at our very center.

 

When we depart Har Sinai, when we are distant from the immediacy of the Shekhina, we must always encamp around the Mishkan - we must orient our lives towards God and God's presence. All roads may lead to Rome, but all hearts, and all minds, must lead to the Mishkan, must lead to God.  Wherever we are in the camp, whichever tribe we are a member of, God stays at the center.

 

And when we move - it is in the context of our relationship to God - "by the command of God they encamped, and by the command of God they moved." (Bamidbar 9:23).  Thus, no matter how geographically distant we are from Mount Sinai, we will not lose our way as long as we continue to orient ourselves to God, to orient our selves and our lives, around and in reference to, the Mishkan. The remainder of Bamidbar is the working out of this challenge - can Bnei Yisrael depart from Har Sinai, and continue to keep God in their midst, continue to orient themselves towards God's presence? We know this is not trivial, for when one is physically distant, it is easy to lose one's way and to forget what is central and essential in one's life.

 

This is also the challenge that presents itself in an actual marriage.  As a couple moves from the chuppah and thesheva b'rakhot and begins to move forward and continue with their life, how will they orient themselves towards one another? Sometimes one spouse will need to travel geographically, or will need to involve him or herself in career, education, or other demands or pursuits. This is a necessary part of life. We must move from Har Sinai. But if we have worked on the relationship, and continue to work on the relationship, then wherever and whenever one travels, the other will always be their center, and all that we pursue will be with the other in mind. John Donne put it best in his "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning":

 

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

 

But we, by a love so much refined

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

 

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two:

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do;

 

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like the other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

 

Sometimes such a relationship come naturally, comes easily.  But often it requires real work.  But when we are able to change our orientation, and to do the work that sustains this orientation, our relationship, and our lives, are transformed.  If we can keep the other, if we can keep our spouse, if we can keep God, at the center, that when we leave the chuppah we will be confident that wherever and however far we doth roam, we will hearken after the other, make our circle just, and end where we had begun.

Dear Friends

Good Hodesh!  I hope you are all well and are getting ready for the upcoming Chag.  As we know, Shavuot, from the Rabbinic perspective, celebrates the day of the Giving of the Torah.  Interestingly, while the simple sense of the verses indicate that it was the men, and not the women, who were being addressed in the lead up to Matan Torah ("Prepare yourselves for the third day - do not draw close to a woman"), Hazal underscore that women were equal participants in standing at Har Sinai and receiving the Torah ("'So you shall say to the house of Jacob, beit Yaakov' - these are the women." - Mechilta of R. Yishmael).  They even understood that the purpose of the three-day wait was to ensure that the women would be ritually pure and able to participate.

 

I was thinking about this ethos, and how it contrasts with what has been happening to the Women of the Wall when they come to pray at the Kotel.  Today, on Rosh Hodesh, thousands of Haredim came to protest letting these women have access to the Kotel to hold their prayers.  Luckily, no one was hurt.  But this ongoing opposition is fueled by a belief that only certain people, acting in only very narrowly defined ways, can be part of this contact with the Holy, with the Divine.

 

This week's parasha gives a very different model than this exclusivist approach.  The camp is arranged around the Mishkan, separated by each tribe.  It is an arrangement of unity, not uniformity. True unity, creating a bonded, cohesive community, comes from respecting differences - ish al diglo - each tribe with its own uniqueness, its own distinctiveness preserved. Some are on the left, some on the right, some North, some South. What held them together was a shared commitment to respect each other's boundaries, to value their degalim, their distinct flags, their diversity, and to exist together as one people with a shared orientation towards God's presence in their midst.

A few years ago, I was in Israel at a conference of rabbis, and the topic for that afternoon was women's participation in the community and the shul. A rabbi spoke on the topic of women saying kaddish. He shared that he wanted to do what was best for the community, and he was prepared to allow a woman to say kaddish in his shul, but this created an enormous amount of conflict. So, for the sake of peace, he reversed his position and asked that women not say kaddish in his shul. While this is an occurrence that happens regularly - in one manifestation or another - in shuls everywhere, I was particularly disturbed by this story. Here was a rabbi who was not motivated ideologically, and who in principle was prepared to allow this practice, but who backed off to preserve the peace in his community. Even setting aside the ethical issue of preserving the peace of the majority at the expense of the rights of the individual, what is deeply disturbing is that there was another way to address the communal issue.

 

The rabbi need not have bought into the cause of the conflict - the belief that many of his community had, that one person's actions defined their identity - that this woman's saying kaddish, this "feminist" act, as it were (here is not the time to detail how this was a widely accepted practice in Lithuania and elsewhere), defined them as "feminist" or "radical" as well. Here was an opportunity to educate the community on the lesson of diversity. That to allow such behavior is not to say that I identify with the position, it is to say that I respect the principle of elu vi'elu, that I want a community that welcomes a wide diversity of people, a halakhic community that respects the range of halakhic practices. Why not do the hard work to create shalom by working to create a community that is a truemachaneh Yisrael. Let each person have his or her degel. It need not be your degel, but make sure that they are part of the camp, that they, like you, can access the Mikdash, and can stand at the foot of Har Sinai.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

This Monday, my Modern Orthodoxy class - which is devoted to this dialectical discourse of Torah with modernity and post-modernity - met for its last lecture this week, where we wrapped up our discussion of some of the most challenging aspects of this discourse: dogma, ikrei emunah, avodah zarah and other religions, and pluralism and tolerance.  The major question is how in all these cases we can keep our red lines and faith commitments firm, and at the same time adopt a welcoming position towards those whose beliefs differ in small and big ways from our own. Over the remaining weeks, students will be deliver their year-end presentations.  They will be covering a wide array of topics, including:  prenuptial agreements, hair covering, partnership minyanim, gay marriage and Orthodoxy, goals and methodologies of Gemara education, teaching Biblical criticism in schools, belief in miracles, metzizah b'peh, and Zionism in the Orthodox community.  It will be an exciting few weeks as we engage together as a class addressing these challenging topics! And in our regular daily learning, years 1 and 2 wrapped up their learning of Hilkhot Shabbat, and are now reviewing and preparing for their semester-end final.  There review assignment is to take some of the topics that we covered and to write up "cheat sheets" - a simple one page they would give their congregants or students, that gives the bullet points of what can and cannot be done, with relevant examples.  Years 3 and 4 continued in their learning of Kashrut, and this week covered the topic of nat bar nat - the status of pareve cooked in  milkhig (or fleishig) pot.  The bottom line is that the food is pareve, but should not intentionally be mixed withfleishig.  This is a very common case that occurs not only in homes, but also at the manufacturing end.  The different hekhsher organizations deal with this differently - the kof-K will indicate this by adding a "DE" (dairy equipment) to their symbol, whereas the OU will make such items as "D" (dairy).   Thus, if an OU-D product got mixed up with meat, it is important to find out if it is really dairy or not.   When in doubt, find out or ask a rabbi who knows!

A Thought on the Parsha

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family: Click here:  Parshat Behar-Bichukotai

This week, with the reading of Behar-Bichukotai, we end the book of Vayikra. The book of Vayikra is often thought of as devoted entirely to sacrifices or, a little more broadly, to the world of the kohanim - sacrifices and tumah vi'tahara, purity and impurity - and has thus also been called Torat Kohanim, the Torah of the Priests. However, this only described the first half of Vayikra. Beginning with Achrei Mot, the Torah turns to the lives of the entire people, and delineates the prohibitions of idolatry and forbidden sexual relationships, framed in terms of tumah and taharah.

This relocating of presumably Temple-centric concepts to the normal lives of the people is completed in the parasha of Kedoshim, where the entire people is called upon to be kadosh, to be holy just as God is holy. The concept of kedusha, we are told, is not limited to the Temple. It is a concept that must guide our lives in all its dimensions, and thus the parasha lays out a wide and diverse array of mitzvot for our lives outside of the Temple, mitzvot which allow us to achieve lives of kedusha. God had us build a Mishkan so that God could dwell in our midst, but the purpose of God dwelling in our midst is not to find God only in the Mishkan, but to take the encounter of God in the Mishkan, and to bring it out of the Mishkan and into all aspects of our lives.

Until now, the life of kedusha outside the Temple is defined by a life of mitzvot observance in general, and of the observance of Shabbat in particular. Shabbat serves as the counterpart to Mikdash.  Mikdash is the holiness of space, and Shabbat is holiness of time.  Thus, Shabbat and Mikdash are regularly juxtaposed in the Torah.  And of the two, it is the kedusha of Shabbat that is greater.  Shabbat precedes Mikdash chronologically - it existed at the beginning of Creation and was commanded even before the revelation at Har Sinai - and its sanctity cannot be violated even for the sake of the construction of the Mikdash. One aspect of its greater importance undoubtedly lies in this - that the kedusha of Shabbat applies to all - men and women, kohanim and Yisraelim - and at all times and at all places.  It is the regular, ongoing, experience of kedusha, of veshakhanti bi'tokham, of "I will dwell in their midst", that exists in our lives.

Shabbat is kedusha outside of the Temple for the individual and the community, but it still falls short of a full life of kedusha. It is only in parashat Behar, that the kedusha of Shabbat becomes the basis for structuring the entire society.

The mitzvah of shmitta, called here Shi'vi'it, the Seventh, is described in the opening section of the parasha as a “Shabbat for the land.” The Torah underscores this point, repeating the word "shabbat" seven (!) times in the opening section, and then commanding the mitzvah of the yovel, after seven cycles of shmitta - it is a Shabbat of the Shabbats.

The use of the term "Shabbat" for the Sabbatical Year demands attention. It is the concept of kedusha, the concept of Shabbat, applied to the land and to the entire existence of the people as a nation. The Torah spells out in Bichukotai the consequences for not observing the Shabbat of the land: destruction of the Temple and exile from the land.  The loss of these two is effectively the destruction of us as a nation.   And, indeed, for two thousand years, from the destruction of the Temple and the exile until the establishment of the modern State of Israel, we have ceased to exist as a nation. We continued to exist as a people, as a religion, but we were not a nation.

Shmitta, then, is kedusha applied on the national level,; it is the structuring of our national identity on the principle of kedusha. What does that mean? The refrain of the Torah in our parsha is "For the land is Mine, for you are strangers and sojourners with Me." (Vayikra 25:23). On the individual and communal level, the refrain from work one day a week, on Shabbat, structures our life so that it is not just about work, creating, and possessing. Our work takes place in a larger context, in a frame of kedusha, and it must serve a larger purpose. On the societal level, our refraining from working the land on year out of seven, on Shmitta, structures our society so that its goals and institutions are not - cannot - be about the acquisition of wealth and the exploiting of the land.

A society that keeps the shmitta understands that the land is not the owner’s to dispose of how they please, and works to protect its natural resources. A society that keeps the Shmitta understands that our energies cannot be devoted to the massing of unlimited wealth, for property will revert to its original owners every 50 years. A society that keeps the Shmitta understands that other human beings are not put on Earth for us to maximally exploit them to our benefit, for humans are not made to serve others, but to serve God. The mitzvot of lending without interest also appear in this parasha, because a society that keeps these laws understands that our money is given to us not for our enrichment at the expense of others, but that our money, our wealth, and the land itself is given to us by God to serve God and to help people. A society that keeps Shmitta understands that everyone must be cared for, that everyone lives and thrives: "And you will strengthen him - the stranger and the sojourner - and he will live with you" (Vayikra 25:35) . Such a society structures its goals and institutions so that what it values is not wealth and possessions, but serving others and serving God.

Until now, we as a people have done very well in the observance of Shabbat and mitzvot. We have done less well in living lives ofkedusha. Our lives of mitzvot often are ones of technical observance, and we lost sight of the values that underlie the mitzvot. We keep the Shabbat meticulously, but this often does not translate into a reframing of our working lives in a way that they serve a higher purpose. And, most significantly, we have never really structured a society around the principles of Shmitta.  In short, we have never given Shmitta a chance. What would it mean to structure a society around principles and goals that are profoundly different from those of the society in which live, in which we have always lived? What would it mean if our financial, industrial, legal, and commercial institutions were structured around the principles of Shmitta?

It is hard to imagine how we can begin to realize such a restructuring of society, but there are places we can start. Not, perhaps, in our secular institutions, but in our Jewish ones. Over 100 years ago, one of the most important institutions for the immigrant Jewish communities in the United States was the Hebrew Free Loan Society. Built on the principles of our parasha, this institution realized the primary responsibility of the Jewish community to support its members, and to do so in ways that made them productive members of society. Through its membership-based structure, the reciprocity that it engendered, and the embracing of the value of communal responsibility, not only were individuals helped, but the entire community was strengthened. Today, we do not have such communal institutions. And often the communal religious institutions that we do have - synagogues and Jewish schools - more buy into the values of academic achievement, professional achievement, earning potential, and amassed wealth - that are those of the secular society than they attempt to redirect our communal values to those of the Torah and those embodied by Shmitta.

On this Shabbat, let us think how in our individual lives we can bring the kedusha of Shabbat into the week, to structure our working week to serve a higher purpose. And let us think how we can bring the kedusha of Shi'vi'it into our society - how we can work without Jewish institutions so that they embrace and communicate the values of a society that serves a higher purpose, that reaches for kedusha.