Parashat Shemini

            Shabbat Shalom! Before talking Torah, it is also time to count the Omer.

ברוך אתה יי אלוקינו מלך/רוח  העולם אשר קידשנו במצוותיו וציונו על ספירת העומר

Baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech/ruach  ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al s’firat ha’omer.

Blessed are you, adonai, our G-od, ruler/spirit of the universe, who sanctifies us with commandments, and commanded us regarding the counting of the omer.

היום אחד עשר  יום שהם שבוע אחד וארבעה ימים בעומר.

Hayom echad asar yom, she’heim sh’vua echad v’arba’ah yamim b’omer.

Today is eleven days, that is one week and four days of the omer.

The mystical realm of this day of the Omer is Netzach she’b’Gevurah, that is Endurance in Strength. On this day in this journey from redemption to revelation, may we remember to be conscientious about sticking with a decision we’ve made.

This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Shemini. The parasha details the inaugural use of the Mishkan, the traveling sanctuary the Israelites worship in during their 40 years in the wilderness. Aaron and his sons take the first sacrifices in, exactly as instructed, and everything looks dandy. Then two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, try to take in a separate sacrifice, a “Strange Fire” that is not instructed, “and there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.” Moses tells Aaron not to mourn for his sons, and the Israelites carry on as if nothing has happened. The Torah then segues into some more laws that Moses has to relay from God to the people, and so we received the laws of Kashrut. The parasha concludes with the laws regarding the mikveh, a spiritual bath, and a commandment to always distinguish the pure from the impure.

Many readers and commentators are troubled by the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, and make excuses for God’s apparent rejections for their sacrifices. They were too bold, they were drunk, they were trying to usurp Aaron and Moses’s positions of power, etc. And any of those explanations may be right. But we have in Rabbinic Judaism the idea of a “d’var acher”, which means “another thing,” and is often the way rabbis disagree with each other respectfully. It’s like saying, “yes, and” instead of “no, but” when offering a new perspective that doesn’t necessarily prove anything else right or wrong. So the Ohr Chaim, an 18^th century Moroccan rabbi offers a “d’var acher” for Nadav and Avihu. He says, “They approached the supernal light out of their great love of the Holy, and thereby died. Thus, they died by a “Divine kiss” such as experienced by the perfectly righteous; it is only that the righteous die when the Divine kiss approaches them, while they died by their approaching it... Although they sensed their own demise, this did not prevent them from drawing near to G‑d in attachment, delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kissing and sweetness, to the point that their souls ceased from them.” Conscientious may not be the right word for their behavior, but in this reading, they certainly were committed to following through with what they started, and demonstrated an enduring and strong commitment to God.

I’m not advocating acting dangerously in the name of some religious fanaticism or anything. But I recently rewatched Fiddler on the Roof, and I can’t help but think of Perchik’s song, Now I Have Everything, in which he sings, “I have something that I would die for, someone that I can live for too.” He has a goal in life, a passion and a drive that consumes him, a cause he would die for, and then he falls in love and he calls Hodel “someone [he] can live for.” They don’t cancel each other out. He doesn’t say now he’s going to step back from the fight for equality so that he can be a better partner to Hodel; he says that now he has everything. A new joy to his life. Hodel, reciprocates in kind, and runs to his aid when he is sent to Siberia, a destination that often meant death. But they are devoted to each other and to their cause. They have endurance and strength, and they are committed to following through on their ideas, even if they sense their own demise approaching in their perseverance.

Take all possible precautions and do your best to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe, but find yourself a passion. A cause you are willing to fight for. A project you refuse to give up on. This sort of devotion can be holy, especially if you are willing to bring a spiritual grounding to it. Bring love and joy to your passion and your cause, and you too can have everything.     

Pesach: From the Narrow Spaces to Liberation

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach! With Passover approaching and now passing, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be free. I’ve been thinking about the Midrash of Nachshon, an Israelite who walked into the Sea of Reeds up to his nose, ready to swim if necessary to freedom, before the Sea split. I’ve been thinking about how Mitzrayim means “a narrow place,” but how narrow that dry path between the Sea walls must have felt. I’ve been thinking about how hard life was for the Israelites in the desert, and how much they complained that at least in Egypt they had plenty to eat and drink and they knew what would become of them. I’ve been thinking about how hard it must have been for Moses or even Nachshon to lead a fearful people away from a comforting familiarity toward an uncertain future, which may be more liberated but which may also require a lot of emotional labor.

Tonight, we are in the throes of Pesach, and our Chol HaMoed reading for today situates us after the Exodus itself, in a time after the Israelites have crossed that sea and reached freedom from the Egyptians, only to find that life in the wilderness is also difficult. A frustrated Moses, tired of defending the Unknowable to the whiny Israelites, and tired of defending the whiny Israelites to the Unknowable, demands to see God’s face. God tells Moses that no man may see the face of God and live, so God instructs Moses to wait in a cleft in a rock — a narrow place — to wait for God to pass by, so that the Divine Goodness will be visible to Moses. So, we have left Mitzrayim, but the work of building freedom and breaking out of narrow spaces is not done. There is the narrow pathway of the dry space between the walls of the Sea of Reeds to walk through. There is the narrow space in the cliff face in which Moses nestles himself waiting for a glimpse of Divinity. There are many years wandering in the desert. There is fear. There is thirst and hunger. There is uncertainty about this Unknowable, Unseeable force. There is fighting, both within the community and with external forces. But, there is also freedom. There is dignity away from forced labor and attempted genocide. There is a taste of holiness, and a new peoplehood born. 

Our Haftarah for this portion comes from Ezekiel, a prophet in exile in Babylonia, praying for the revival of a seemingly dead and cut off people. So many in the institutional Jewish world worry about what they see as a dwindling population of involved young Jews, and pray for the revival of Jewish life. I know sometimes we worry about membership in this congregation, too. But after spending some significant time with other millennial Jews lately, some of whom are unaffiliated and just reaffirming their commitments to Judaism and some of whom are fellow rabbis, rabbinical students, and otherwise observant young adults, I feel very confident that the Jewish community is plenty lively. I have so much faith for our future and our liberation. I believe that the future will be good for us. Though I work toward widespread and intersectional freedom, I am wholly aware that I cannot promise perfect freedom, though I don’t think anyone would expect me to. There is a lot of hard work ahead, maybe even 40 more years’ worth, before we will see a liberated world with freedom and dignity for all. But we’re ready to leave Mitzrayim. We ARE leaving Mitzrayim, this narrow place of feeling enslaved by historical trauma and the ever-looming threat of antisemitic violence. We are crossing the Sea of Reeds, navigating carefully through a narrow space that seeks to reinforce narratives of self-hating Jews, in order to come out the other side as self-loving Jews. We are stepping out from that cleft in the rock, the safe-feeling narrow space where we thought we might catch a glimpse of the Unknowable, but found we could only see the backside of Divine Goodness. We are raising our dry bones from the justice-starved, peace-parched earth and we are reviving Jewish commitment toward tzedek and tikkun olam. We are leading our community toward the future, a future of freedom and dignity for all. In the future, we will look back our promises to ourselves this Pesach, our commitments to show Elijah that we are ready for peace on Earth, and we will know we were on the right side of history. 

May you find the courage to step into your own Sea of Reeds. May you navigate your narrow places and find self-affirmation, community, liberation, and love. May you catch a glimpse of Divinity. May you rise up as if from the dead, reborn as the Spring, to take a stand for freedom and dignity for all. And may Elijah find us next year worthy of a Messianic age, that we may all live in peace together. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Tzav and our Eternal Flames

            Shabbat Shalom. I found myself today thinking a lot about the night the U.S. went to war with Iraq. Last night, the U.S. military attacked a Syrian airbase. It differs from the bombs the U.S. has been dropping in Syria for the last two years in that it was an attack on the Syrian government and official military rather than just the Islamic State groups, but as of yet it may still be similar in intention. A single action meant to deter worse that may be coming from the target. As of yet, there’s no evidence that the U.S. is about to engage in another long-term ground incursion. However, the language and sense of tension on social media and among my coworkers feels so similar to 2002-2003 in the lead up to the war on Iraq. I was fairly young and I’m sure there’s a lot I still don’t understand about all that, but I remember the sense of inevitability in the rhetoric that led to the military engagement, and I know that “war is not healthy for children or other living things.” On opening night of my first high school musical, our director gathered us, in costume, to tell us that the U.S. had officially sent in troops. We got on stage anyway and sang our hearts out in songs that caution against violence, songs that mourn the “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” that battles leave behind. When I think of the finale of our show, I think about the dangers of war. Of all the civilians lost in any military engagement. Of the economic ruins and governmental mess that often follows such actions. But despite the tragedy and horror that accompanies violence, the show ends on a positive note. One of the verses in the finale, seemingly sung by the ghosts of the poor people of France, slaughtered by their own government, goes: “For the wretched of the Earth, there is a flame that never dies; even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

            The song goes on with more allusions to Biblical references which you might recognize, but this too comes from our holy text, and in fact from this week’s parasha, Parashat Tzav. Several times the Torah tells us about the eternal flame that the priests must tend to. This is, of course, related to the Ner Tamid, the eternal light, which our lamps above the Ark now symbolize, but the word used over and over in this week’s parasha is “aish,” fire or flame. There will be a flame always burning on the altar; it shall never go out. Of course, this fire is not just upon the altar of the ancient Temple, or symbolized in a Ner Tamid lamp. It is inside of us all. It is our passion and our love for Judaism, justice, and each other. It is our spark of Divinity that is inside each person, which we must tend to and keep alive, always.  

            Sometimes, it is hard to feel in touch with this flame. When sad, it may be easier to numb it out. When angry, it may be easier to let the flame of anger burn brighter than the flame of love and holiness. When overjoyed, we may simply forget to harness the joy and maintain a sustainable flame. The Lubavitcher Rebbe says, “There are times when we believe ourselves to be “above it all,” as the spirituality of the moment transports beyond the so-called trivialities of physical life. Conversely, there are times when we feel overwhelmed by those very “trivialities.” Says the Torah: the fire on your internal altar must—and can—be kept burning at all times. No moment in your life is too exalted or too debased to sustain your passion and enthusiasm in the fulfillment of the purpose to which you were created, which is to raise up to G‑d the materials of your everyday existence.”

Rabbi Moshe Alshich, a 16^th century Ottoman sage, understands this difficulty. He says, “There is a fire of love for G‑d that burns within every soul. It is the task of the kohen—the spiritual leaders of the generation—to feed and preserve this fire.” As I’ve said before, the role of a rabbi or a community leader is fundamentally different from that of a Kohen. We cannot be intermediaries for your relationship to the Divine as they were. However, I do hope that I can be present for you in whatever way you need to help you keep your own aish tamid burning constantly. To help you feel the spark of your own Divinity, and to see it in others. To ensure that you feel welcome and whole in the Jewish community, and that your maintain that sense of wholeness when you are out in the world engaging with secular or profane elements of life. This flame never dies. It follows you outside these sanctuary walls to work, to school, to war, to peace, to the theatre, to the cafes. It will never go out. Don’t let it ever go out.