Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Tzav: Ashes on the Altar

One of my favorite books about time management is entitled The Power of Full Engagement, a book that views managing one’s life as a challenge of how spend our mental and physical energy, as opposed to how we manage individual tasks.   In particular, the authors argue that we manage our energy through creating what they call “positive rituals,” or routinized behaviors that convey a high sense of purpose.  The authors write:

“Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action— to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors” (Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement, Chapter 10: Taking Action- The Power of Positive Rituals).

In this passage, the authors remind us that every small act can become a meaningful ritual if the act becomes related to a deeper purpose we attempt to achieve by means of performing the ritual.   This idea is embraced in Parshat Tzav, where our commentators explain how we even the most minute ritual can contain within it the seeds of greater transformation and growth.   

Famously, the Torah commands that kohanim pay careful attention to each aspect of service in the mishkan, and Parshat Tzav specifically describes how they should tend to the burnt offering on the altar, even proscribing how one should tend to the altar’s ashes.  The parasha states:

“8 The Lord said to Moses: 9 “Give Aaron and his sons this command: ‘These are the regulations for the burnt offering: The burnt offering is to remain on the altar hearth throughout the night, till morning, and the fire must be kept burning on the altar. 10 The priest shall then put on his linen clothes, with linen undergarments next to his body, and shall remove the ashes of the burnt offering that the fire has consumed on the altar and place them beside the altar. 11 Then he is to take off these clothes and put on others, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a place that is ceremonially clean” (Vayikra 6:8-11).

In modernity, it might seem peculiar the parasha specifically states that the kohanim must remove the ashes from the altar wearing fine clothes.   However, our rabbinic commentators see this small detail as paradigmatic of the way in which all people should approach the service of God.  

In a medieval commentary, the Spanish commentator Rabbeinu Bahya writes that we can interpret the kohanim’s service of the ashes typologically, and see their service a God in the performance of this offering as a model for all service of God.   He writes:

“We see that even for the menial task of lifting the ashes, the Torah commands the Kohen to wear graceful holy garments.    The lesson to be learned from this is that all ritual or religious assignments should be carried out in a worthy and decorous manner, and that we should humble ourselves for the glory of God, blessed be He, to perform exacting tasks...” (Rabbeinu Bahya ben Asher on Vayikra 6).   

According to Rabbeinu Bahya, the fact that the kohanim were required to tend to even seemingly meaningless tasks such as lifting ashes off the mishkan must compel us to see every aspect of divine service as requiring our full and undivided attention.   

Later commentaries expanded upon the idea reflected in Rabbeinu Bahya’s commentary, and argue that we can learn essential lessons about the importance of personal renewal in divine service based on the kohanim’s service in the mishkan.   In a Hasidic commentary, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Ger, otherwise known as the Sefat Emet analogizes service on the alter to daily tefillah, specifically noting the challenge of making prayer meaningful each and every day.  He writes:

“This is the purpose of human worship.  Each day a new light comes down upon those who serve God, as Scripture says: “And the priest upon those who serve God, as the Scripture says: “And the priest shall burn wood upon it each morning, each morning” (6:5).  So too, it is written, “in His goodness He renews each day” (Prayerbook).   This love comes to us as a gift of divine grace.  Something of this light should remain imprinted on the heart throughout the day and night, “it may not go out”...The commandment here to remove the ashes hints that as we burn up the waste in our lives we are uplifted each day, and then we are given a new light.  This redemptive process is with us every single day...” (Sefat Emet on Vayikra 6:1, 6, in The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, ed. Arthur Green, 154).

In this commentary, the Sefat Emet draws our attention to the fact that since sacrificial worship was the way the biblical Israelites served God, and thereby was the primary means for divine engagement, the service of the altar teaches us how to engage with tefillah, which is our means of divine service in a world without a temple.    Just as the Torah required that the fire on the altar to be constantly tended as a reminder of the spiritual possibilities of each day, so too must every Jew see daily tefillah as an opportunity to begin a new spiritual journey.  

Similarly, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, considered by many to be the intellectual forefather of modern Orthodox Judaism, the service of the altar can not only provide us a model for thinking about tefillah, but all mitzvot.    Regarding this, he writes:

“The daily service begins with the lifting of the ashes, terumat hadeshen, recalling the previous day’s service and their unfailing remembrance of God.  However, the clearing away of the ashes signifies that each new day renews our commitment to comply with all that is incumbent upon us.  We must perform our daily observe of mitzvot with a new zest, as if we had never performed them before” (Samson Raphael Hirsch, from Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Vayikra, 69).   

Hirsch emphasizes the biblical and rabbinic conceptions of how scrupulously the kohanim tended to the offering on the altar, even showing zest and enthusiasm for such menial tasks as removing the ashes from the altar.   By extension, if the kohanim saw even the removal of the ashes as an opportunity to show passion for divine service, how much more so should each of us tend to any aspect of Jewish lives with a similar passion?

Without question, every Jewish person needs to be mindful of how their Jewish practice can be stifled when monotony becomes the norm for how they approach any individual mitzvah.   By extension, Parshat Tzav’s description of the terumat hadeshen reminds us that the more we succeed in viewing each and every Jewish act as a positive rituals that facilitates divine connection, the better will be able to find freshness and newness in our Jewish lives.   May each of us embrace the task of challenging ourselves and our children to every Jewish act as a as a ritual that provides us meaning and focus, raising ourselves up in our relationship with God and one another.

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Vayikra: Our Immanent and Transcendent God

In his masterful commentary on the Torah and the state of North American Jewry, Chancellor Arnold Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary argues that rather that merely recounting an archaic list of sacrifices and rituals for Israelite cultic worship, Sefer Vayikra actually resonates with humanity’s desire for spiritual connection to God in their daily lives.   He writes:

“Leviticus aims to heighten and sanctify ordinary experience.  It wants us to focus on the possibilities for love and good stored up in daily life, and tries to accomplish this through a vision of community that is symbolized, and prepared for, in ritual.  Far from being irrelevant to contemporary experience, then, Leviticus concentrates on precisely the two elements [community and ritual] which many Jews find most appealing in Jewish tradition, and which are arguably most crucial to the revitalization of American Jewish life” (Arnold Eisen, Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America, 72).  

According to Eisen, the central focus of Sefer Vayikra is the way the Israelite community will be centered around rituals in the mishkan.  As such, our task as readers of the Torah is to translate the ancient rituals into our context, and see how each mitzvah remains essential to forming Jewish community.

In Parshat Vayikra, we open with a fairly simple explanation on how a person shall make a sacrifice before God.  The Torah states that, “if his offering be a burnt offering of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish; he shall offer it at the door of the Tent of Meeting, that he may be accepted, before the Lord.”  (Leviticus 1:3).  When examining this verse, our commentators argue that sacrifices provide some of the best means by which the Israelites can connect to God through immanence and transcendence.   On the one hand, sacrifices provide tangible means by which the Israelites can sense God’s presence being near to them, thereby drawing attention to God’s immanence.   At the same time, the very act of making a sacrifice emphasizes God being apart from humanity, thereby drawing to God’s transcendence.   

In her essays on the Parshat HaShavua, Nehama Leibowitz brings a commentary from Benno Jacob, a modern German rabbi and biblical scholar, who argues that the sacrifices must be brought before the Tent of Meeting so that a person’s thought can become aware of God’s immanent presence.   Jacob writes:

“Wherever man may be, he stands before the Lord.  However, when “he brings an offering to the Lord,” he does so “before the door of the Tent of Meeting,” the place about which God said, “That I may dwell amongst them” (Exodus 25:8), where God commanded us to erect a dwelling place for the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) in the midst of His people, and where the Holy Ark and the Tablets are found.   It is from there that God’s word reaches Israel through Moses.  Here every detail remind man of his God, and nothing diverts his thoughts from God.  Owing to his constitution, man needs such assistance (i.e. a “localized,” visible sanctuary).”  (Benno Jacob)

Benno Jacob’s commentary emphasizes that the mishkan was built was so that a person could experience the divine presence in critical life moments.  By extension, since each sacrifice is offered in moments when a person requires a deeper communion with God, one must bring the sacrifice to the physical structure specifically designed to serve as a catalyst for the immanent divine encounter.

However, while the ability to approach God and offer a sacrifice implies a degree of closeness between the Israelites and God, the command itself to offer sacrifices also indicates God’s ultimate transcendence.  The Maharal of Prague describes the transcendent act of sacrifice in the following way:

"Perhaps it will seem difficult to you, if avodah (service of God) is not for the benefit of God, be He blessed, why then did He command this avoda to bring sacrifices to Him? This is no question, because even if this is not for God’s benefit, nonetheless when a person surrenders himself unto God, or even if he does not render up his soul to Him, but only his property, by bringing a sacrifice, this is still considered surrendering himself to Hashem when he gives Him his property. This is called avodah, because a servant (eved) is the property of his master... he and his property all belong to his master... When he brings a sacrifice before Him, this shows that all belongs to Him, for there is no other and He, may He be blessed, is One” (Maharal, Netivot Olam, Chapter 1).

In this commentary, the Maharal argues that by making an offering from one’s personal property, the person implicitly acknowledges that everything they posses does not belong to them, but can, and ultimately should, return to God.    As a result, the act of sacrifice emphasizes the distance between humanity and God, reminding us we make sacrifices to God because God has unique expectations and requirements of us.

At any point in our lives, we are faced with the challenge of understanding what it means to pursue a divine encounter.   However, while it may seem that Sefer Vayikra is the text least likely to help us pursue the divine, the above commentaries remind us that Sefer Vayikra’s emphasis on ritual sacrifice creates a framework to help draw us closer to God while also heightening of awareness of God’s uniqueness in this world.    Similarly, we have the opportunity to remind ourselves and our children of our parasha’s overarching message, helping one another approach God in a way that increases our sense of closeness, while using that experience of closeness to demonstrate God’s unique place at the center of our lives.   May each of embrace the challenge of experiencing God’s immanence and transcendence, letting the world of ritual sacrifice remind of what it means to pursue the divine encounter in tangible, meaningful, and powerful ways.

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei: Learning in Our Element

Recently, I read a book by Ken Robinson entitled The Element that attempts to broaden our understanding how we understand the nature of intelligence.   Robinson argues that each person needs to find their “element,” a particular skill or subject to which they mind is uniquely attuned, and this process requires that each of us broaden our understanding of what intelligence is.  He writes:

“How are you intelligent? Knowing that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinctive allows you to address that question in new ways. This is one of the core components of the Element. For when you explode your preconceived ideas about intelligence, you can begin to see your own intelligence in new ways. No person is a single intellectual score on a linear scale. And no two people with the same scores will do the same things, share all of the same passions, or accomplish the same amount with their lives. Discovering the Element is all about allowing yourself access to all of the ways in which you experience the world, and discovering where your own true strengths lie” (Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, 51).

According to Robinson, the more we understand the expansive nature of the intelligence, the better we are able to uncover our own talents and the talents of others, a vision that we also find in this week’s parasha of Vayakhel-Pekudei, which recounts the conclusion of the construction of the mishkan.

In the two sections of the Torah which mentions Bezalel’s appointment to construct the mishkan, the Torah notes that Bezalel was appointed because he possessed specific intellectual qualities.  The Torah states the following:

“And Moses said unto the children of Israel: See, the Lord called by the name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.   And he has filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom (hokhmah), in understanding (tevunah), and in knowledge (da’at), and in all manner of workmanship” (Shemot 35:30-31).

At first glance, it would appear that wisdom, understanding, and knowledge are redundant ways of saying that Bezalel was intelligent, yet our commentators argue that these three qualities each describe an essential aspect of what it means to acquire knowledge, and how God envisions that each of us might become a wise person in this world and in our spiritual callings.    

Rashi glosses on the above verses by stating that each quality of Bezalel relates to three core aspects of study that begin with the personal and end with the divine.   He writes:

“Hokhmah: What a person learns from others.

Tevunah: A wide understanding gained through intelligent application of what he has learned.

Da’at: The holy spirit.” (Rashi on Shemot 35:31)

Upon reading Rashi’s commentary, one notices two things.   First, Rashi argues that each description of Bezalel’s intelligence relates to one’s ability to learn from others, for intelligence is not confined of what an individual can learn in a book, but rather emerges from learning in a spiritual community.   Second, Rashi makes a linkage between Bezalel’s modes of intelligence and becoming joined to God on earth.   For each quality, Rashi argues that the Torah deliberately specifies different types of intelligence because humanity’s quest for knowledge involves developing different skills and capacities, both human and divine.   

In a late midrashic text, Pirke Rabbi Eliezer argues that the three types of intelligence mentioned in Sefer Shemot parallel the three qualities that formed the spiritual structure in which God created the world.   The midrash states:

“In ten sayings the world was created...and in three it was finalized and these are they: Hokhmah, tevunah, and da’at as it is stated: “The Lord in hokhmah founded the earth, by tevunah established the heavens, by his da’at the depths were split asunder.  With the same three the Mishkan was made, as it is stated: “I have filled with him the spirit of God, in hokhmah, tevunah, and da’at.  With the same three was the Temple built, as it is stated: “...his father was a Tyrean worker in bronze.  And he was filled with hokhmah, tevunah, and da’at.  With the same three it is destined to be rebuilt, as it is stated, “With hokhmah shall the house be rebuilt, and in tevunah established and in da’at the rooms furnished” (Proverbs 24:3-4)” (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer 3).

The above midrash envisions a spiritual world in which our modes of intelligence are joined together in a cosmic fabric that makes God a part of each intellectual act.  By extension, the Torah enumerates that Bezalel possessed wisdom, understanding and knowledge because the construction of the mishkan required a person whose intelligence reflected the holistic way in which God envisioned knowledge to exist in the world.

Finally, when modern Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn examined this passage from Shemot in his Biur, Mendelssohn argued that the triad of qualities possessed by Bezalel correspond to the various subjects and means by which a person can perfect their intellect.  Mendelssohn writes:

“These three terms spell out what “the spirit of God” comprises.  A knowledge of the technique by which we achieve our desires is termed hokhmah.   Sometimes the desired goal is a theoretical one, at others a practical one.   In this sense the sciences are divided into pure and applied...Tevunah refers to the ability to deduce one thing from another and achieve the unknown from the unknown...Da’at refers to the ability to perceive forms as they are whether they are sensory or extra-sensory” (Moses Mendelssohn, Biur on Exodus 35).   

In this passage, Mendelssohn argues that just as there are multiple levels and modes of intelligence for every person, so too does the Torah argues that Bezalel was a perfect choice for constructing the mishkan because he possessed a multi-layered mind capable of the complex work required to construct a fitting spiritual place in which the Israelites could serve God.

Regardless of whether or not one finds more resonance in one of the three above commentaries, each commentary provides us an opportunity to expand our understanding of what intelligence means, and recognize that no form of intelligence operates independently, but rather each type feeds off other modes of intelligence.    As a result, when building a learning community, each of us is challenged to help our students understanding the multi-layered nuances to what intelligence means, and help them develop a personal for how they engage with knowledge, Torah, and the Divine.  In doing, we will ensure that our students have the opportunity to feel that every moment learning at Schechter is moment the student can be in their element.   

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Ki Tissa: Pausing for Sanctity

In her introduction to Abraham Joshua Heschel’s magnificent work The Sabbath, Heschel’s daughter Susannah describes the way in which her father prepared for Shabbat evening at home.  She writes:

“The sense of peace that came upon us as we kindled the lights was created, in part, by the hectic tension of Fridays...My father came home from his office an hour or two before sunset to take care of his own preparation, and as the last minutes of the workweek came close, both of my parents were in the kitchen, frantically trying to remember what they have might have forgotten to prepare...Then, suddenly, it was time: twenty minutes before sunset.  Whatever hadn’t been finished in the kitchen was simply left behind as we lit candles and blessed the arrival of the Sabbath.  My father writes, “The Sabbath comes like a caress, wiping away fear, sorrow and somber memories” (Susannah Heschel, Introduction to The Sabbath, viii).   

Susannah Heschel’s introduction portrays what I consider the central call of Shabbat, that each of us might take a pause from the week of work, and allows us to encounter the divine.   While Shabbat is mentioned at several points in the Torah, parshat Ki Tissa contains God’s hint as to how Shabbat provides a unique opportunity to understand God’s sanctity in ways we might never imagine.   

God’s command in Parshat Ki Tissa regarding the observance of Shabbat includes a curious addition, one that ascribes a particular purpose for the Israelites’ observance of Shabbat.   The parasha states (emphasis mine):

“You shall keep my Sabbath, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations to know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.  Therefore, the children of Israel shall keep Shabbat, to observe Shabbat throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.   It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever” (Shemot 31:13,16-17).

For our rabbinic commentators, the Torah’s assertion that one should observe Shabbat “to know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you” is a curious statement, for the Torah text does not outline the specific linkage between Shabbat observance and divine sanctification.    For our rabbinic commentators, the question of sanctification will play a critical role in what the rabbis teach us about the function of Shabbat in our lives.

In a talmudic interpretation of this passage, our early rabbinic sages use a parable to describe the relationship between Shabbat and knowledge of God’s divine sanctity.  The Talmud states:

“For it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations to know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”  Said Rav: He who gives his friend a gift must notify him as it is written: “to know that I am the Lord who sanctify you.”  We have also learned: “to know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”   Said the Holy One Blessed be He to Moses: I have a goodly gift in my treasury to bestow on you called Shabbat and I ask you to give it to Israel.  Go and let them know...” (Talmud Shabbat 10b).

In this passage, the Talmud views Shabbat as God’s gift to the Jewish people, for Shabbat provides a constant recognition of God’s divinity for all to witness.   As a result, each time a person makes Shabbat a serious priority, they are cherishing that gift the Talmud states was given to the Israelites at Har Sinai.

When we reach the Medieval Period, our classic commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra analyzes the verse from Parshat Ki Tissa with an eye toward the practical, emphasizing that the actual activities performed on Shabbat express God’s sanctity.  He writes:

“The phrase “to know” implies that you should know that you are sanctified to Me.  We may detect here an allusion to the obligation of every Jew to study Torah...For on Shabbat the men and women would visit the prophets and sages to hear Torah” (Ibn Ezra on Shemot 31:13).   

In this commentary, Ibn Ezra asserts that we must understand Shabbat as a day to refrain from the worldly pursuits of the week, and instead focus on the higher purpose of Torah study.   By extension, since Torah study is the religious and intellectual means by which a person can encounter the divine, Shabbat provides us greater opportunity to “know” that God is sanctified by means of exploring the meaning of that sanctity through study.

Finally, similar to Ibn Ezra’s approach, but with a greater emphasis on the spiritual, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook writes in his Shabbat Ha-Aretz that the actual time of Shabbat is a spiritually distinct from the rest of the week, and every person can recognize their full divine potential if and only if they make Shabbat an essential part of their weekly rhythm.  Rav Kook writes:

“The weekday existence does not allow the national genius and the Divine goodness residing within it, with all its spiritual aspirations to justice and righteousness, tranquility and peace, to be fully realized.  The bustle and confusion of everyday affairs stifles the spiritual majesty of the Divine soul (residing in the nation) whose luster is prevented from illuminating the predominant material reality.   The quality of life can only be improved by affording a breathing space from the bustle of everyday affairs.   In this way the individual recovers from the influence of the mundane at frequent intervals, every Shabbat day” (Rav Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, Shabbat Ha-Aretz).

Reflecting both of the commentaries of the Talmud and Ibn Ezra, Rav Kook’s commentary asserts that Shabbat is a gift that God gives to us precisely because it provides us an opportunity to transition from the worldly pursuits of the week and focus on something deeper and more essential to our humanity.  Therefore, when we fully actualize Shabbat’s potential for our lives, we will be spiritually transformed, thereby allowing each of us to know the true nature of God’s sanctity.

While there is no question that instilling a strong worth ethic remains one of the central goals of education, our Jewish tradition places importance on the value of taking a pause, and using rest to achieve a sanctified purpose.   As our parasha reminds us, Shabbat demonstrates our awareness of God’s role in our world, and may each of us merit to take the gift of Shabbat and allow it to remind ourselves and our children of the power of taking a pause and making Shabbat a part of us.

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Terumah: A Sanctuary of Learning

In Being Adolescent: Conflict and Growth in the Teenage Years, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Reed Larson found a disturbing number of teenagers who primarily associated time in the classroom with boredom.   The authors wrote:

“Compared to other contexts in their lives, time in class is associated with lower-than-average states on nearly every self-report dimension.  Most notably, students report feeling sad, irritable, and bored; concentration is difficult; they feel self-conscious and strongly wish they were doing something else” (Being Adolescent, p. 204-205).

While this passage may be shocking, it is not terribly surprising, as it gets to the root of the challenge of keeping students engaged in any educational setting.  In a classroom, a teacher must challenge themselves to make the student the central nervous-system of the learning, so that the teacher is attuned to how each student is connected to what taking in class on any given day.   As a result, an ideal educational setting is one in which there is a constant sense that the teacher and the learner are in-sync with one another, a paradigm that is envisioned in Parshat Terumah’s command to construct the mishkan.

Parshat Terumah opens with God idrawing a connection between the importance of the Israelites building this mishkan, and God’s ability to remain a constant presence.  The parasha states the following (emphasis mine):

“And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying: ‘Speak unto the children of Israel, that they take for Me an offering; of every man whose heart makes him willing you shall take My offering.  And this is the offering which you shall take of them: gold, and silver, and brass; and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair; and rams’ skins dyed red, and seal-skins, and acacia-wood; oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense; onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate.   And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell amongst them’” (Shemot 25:1-8).

For our rabbinic commentators, the question was asked as to what is the connection between the revelation of laws and principles received by the Israelites at Har Sinai in the previous parshiyot, and the command to build the mishkan in Parshat Terumah, a construction that will occupy the rest of Sefer Shemot.   

In many cases, our rabbinic commentators view the command in Parshat Terumah to build a mishkan as intimately connected to the experience of standing at Har Sinai, yet each commentator draws a different lessons as to what we can learn from that connection.   The Ramban writes in his Torah commentary that the mishkan itself contains an esoteric allusion to the mount of receiving the Torah at Har Sinai.  He writes:

And the esoteric meaning of the Mishkan is that divine glory that dwelt on Har Sinai will in a hidden way dwell in it. And just as it says, “And the glory of God dwelt on Har Sinai,”… so it says with regard to the Mishkan, “And the glory of God filled the Mishkan.” And within the context of the Mishkan, the glory revealed to Israel at Har Sinai remained with them … and just as it says, “From the heavens He sounded His voice”… so too by the Mishkan, “And he heard the voice speaking to him from above the kaporet from between the keruvim” (Ramban on Shemot 25:1)

According to Ramban, since God’s presence would also remain within the mishkan itself, the construction and use of the mishkan would provide a constant link for the Israelites to the revelation at Har Sinai.

In a modern commentary, the Italian rabbi and scholar Umberto Cassuto argues that while the mishkan certainly alludes to the experience at Har Sinai, the construction of the mishkan also addresses the potential danger for the Israelites to lose their connection to God as they journeyed throughout the desert, thereby necessitating the construction of a portable vessel in which God’s presence remains.  Cassuto writes:

“we must realize that the children of Israel, after they have been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany.  So long as they were encamped in the palace, they were conscious of God’s nearness; but once they set out on their journey, it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God’s presence among them.  It was function of the Tabernacle to serve as such a symbol” (Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967, page 319).

Cassuto’s commentary alludes to the universal spiritual challenge that everyone faces when they feel physically distant from God.  As moderns, it is certainly a common concern that since God no longer reveals himself as he did during the age of the exodus from Egypt or even in the age of the prophets, we might draw the conclusion that God is no longer present at all.   This modern concern was not lost upon the Torah, and our rabbinic commentators, for, as Cassuto argues, “The nexus between Israel and the Tabernacle is a perpetual extension of the bond that was forged at Sinai between the people and their God,” forever providing the Israelites the opportunity to recognize God’s closeness in their journey through the wilderness (Ibid.).

Finally, in her psychological approach to the weekly parasha, Aviva Zornberg argues that the mishkan’s construction provides the Israelites the opportunity to transition from receiving God’s world-making presence at Har Sinai to creating a spiritual world on earth that they themselves must construct.  She writes:

“The aim of Exodus is to help its participants to take apart a private world that has held them captive.  In the end, after their physical release from slavery, a new recognition of inner conflict, even of potentially tragic inner conflict, will be the key to experiencing themselves as active “makers” of the world” (Aviva Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, 322).

Zornberg’s perspective appears to diverge from the perspective of the Ramban and Cassuto, yet she is actually addressing a similar concern.  According to Zornberg, while the experience at Har Sinai marked the climactic moment when the Israelties’ experience in Egypt was forever shattered, the building of the mishkan is meant to mark the first moment when the Israelites begin constructing their own world.  However, in construct this new world, the mishkan represents a space that will keep the Israelites and God forever connected to one another.

Just as the Israelites were charged with the task of constructing a spiritual conduit between them and God in Parshat Terumah, each student at Schechter is faced with the daily task of connecting themselves to the learning that takes place in the classroom.  The challenge for each educator and member of our community is to help students see pathways to engage a learner’s curiosity and passions, so that each day is the opportunity to construct a new world of rich, robust learning.   May each be worthy of that task, creating links to learning that may each day a sanctuary of education for our children.

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Mishpatim: Torah and Social Conscience

If I made a list of things that people tell me about Judaism that give me the greatest stress, on the top of the list would be when people tell me that Judaism is primarily a system of ritual behaviors, that the greatest concern of the Torah is that we perform commandments that demonstrate our devotion God, and with less emphasis on our devotion to one another.   In response, I would tell people that the Torah does not demarcate concern for God with concern for our fellow human beings; instead, the Torah attempts to embed social conscience into the performance of mitzvot themselves, a lesson we learn in this week’s parasha.

In Parshat Mishpatim, the Israelites are given that famous mitzvah about not oppressing the stranger, yet the mitzvah is juxtaposed to a harsh punishment that will befall anyone who does not observe the mitzvah.  The Torah states the following:

“You shall neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in Egypt in the land of Egypt.  You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.   If you will afflict them in any way, and they cry at all unto Me, I shall surely hear their cry.  My anger shall burn, and I will slay you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless” (Exodus 22:20-23).

Upon first reading this passage, it may be surprising to see the statement that one must not oppress the stranger as not merely an ethical ideal, but a mitzvah with severe consequences.   However, when our rabbinic commentators examine this passage, they see this mitzvah and its consequence as arising out of the Torah’s desire to teach us a sense of compassion and identification with the Other.

Our medieval commentator Rashbam examines this passage contextually, and asks the question of why the Torah prescribes such a harsh punishment for anyone who oppresses the stranger.  He writes:

““Do not oppress him” to do your work since he has no champion as it is written: “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them” (Exodus 3:9).  “For you were strangers” as explained in the very next verse: “For you know the feelings of a stranger, seeing as you were strangers.”  The severity of the punishment will match the intensity of his misery”  (Rashbam on 20:23).

According to the Rashbam, since the experience of the Israelites in Egypt was one where the Israelites as strangers were oppressed by the established majority, it makes sense that the Torah would similarly prohibit the Israelites from oppressing others when they are the majority people.    By extension, the mitzvah intends to teach of us the responsibility that comes with looking out for those who are strangers, for not forgetting that we might also be strangers, whether in the past, present, or future.

While the Rashbam’s limits his interpretation to the literary perspective of the mitzvah, the Sefer Ha-Hinukh, the medieval text that attempts to identify all 613 mitzvot and state the reasons for each, develops a more direct connection between the mitzvah and the importance of teaching compassion and understanding for those outside of the normative group.    The text states the following:

“This precept applies at all times and places both to males and females, and whoever transgresses it and causes suffering to strangers, or neglects to save them or their property, or makes light of them, on account of their being strangers and helpless, has thereby abrogated this positive precept.  Their punishment is severe indeed, since the Torah contains many such admonitions.”

“We should learn from this valuable precept to show compassion to any man not in his hometown, far from his friends, just as we observe that the Torah admonishes us to show compassion to all in need.   Through these moral qualities we shall merit the compassion of the Lord.  The text motivates the precept stating that: “You were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  It reminds us that we had already experienced the great suffering that one strange in a foreign land feels.   By picturing to ourselves the pain involved which we ourselves had already undergone, from which God, in His mercy, delivered us, our compassion will be stirred up towards every man in his plight” (Sefer Ha-Hinukh on “You shall not not oppress the stranger”).

According to the Sefer Ha-Hinukh, this mitzvah in Parshat Mishpatim commands us to recognize that just as we ask that God be compassionate to us, particularly in those moments when we feel most vulnerable, so too must we show compassion to those people we see in our community that feel, or are, vulnerable.

When we finally enter the modern period, biblical scholar Robert Alter asserts that the mitzvah of not oppressing the stranger is a specific command calling for compassion that demonstrates the Torah’s desire for us to be socially conscious, more generally.  He writes:

““Abuse...cry out...hear their outcry”: The terms used here pointedly echo the language used at the beginning of Exodus to describe the oppression of Israel in Egypt and God’s response to that suffering.  This law, then, like the previous one that explicitly invokes the Hebrews’ conditions of sojourners in Egypt, touches on the experience of slavery as an enduring prod to social conscience”  (Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: Translation with Commentary, 446).

According to Alter, the command to not oppress the stranger forces each of us to recognize that the Torah impacts us not only in our relationship with God, but also impacts our sense of social conscience.

One of the greatest dangers when teaching Torah to others is limiting our understanding of Torah to ritual behavior, assuming that the Torah only impacts us within a certain domain of our life.   Instead, the command to not oppress the stranger in Parshat Mishpatim reminds us that the power of Torah extends to every corner of our life, the spiritual, the ethical and the social.  May we challenge our students and ourselves to use Torah as a means of promoting compassion and social conscience, shaping a world that needs more people to care about the needs of the strangers amongst us.

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Yitro: Embracing the Gift of Torah

Every time I sit synagogue in and hear Parshat Yitro read, or study a piece of the parasha with a hevruta, I always find myself trying to imagine the scene as the Israelites stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, and how that scene attempted to imprint a message upon the Israelites and the generations that would follow.   Indeed, God tells Moses to inform the Israelites the receiving of the Torah should be an everlasting vision for all future generations:

“Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.  Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites”” (Exodus 19:3-6).

As I read this passage, I try to imagine how the words that God spoke to the Israelites on that day, and how I, a twenty-first century Jew, should keep this image with me in my everyday practice as a Jew, a question not lost upon our ancient and modern rabbinic commentators.   

When our commentators imagine the scene at Har Sinai, they imagine that the equivalent of a spiritual wedding took place between God and the Israelites when the Torah was received.   A midrash states the following:

“"And Moshe brought the people out of the camp to meet with God" (Shemot 19:17).  Rabbi Yose said: Yehuda would expound: "And he said, The Lord came from Sinai" (Devarim 33:2).  Do not read thus, but rather: "The Lord came to Sinai" – to give the Torah to Israel.  Or perhaps you should not say this, but rather: "The Lord came from Sinai" – to receive Israel, like a bridegroom who goes out to meet his bride” (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Massekhet Ba-Hodesh, Yitro, Parasha 3).

In the midrash, the receiving of the Torah is seen as the culmination of a courtship between God and the Israelites, where the act of receiving the Torah becomes the moment in which the eternal relationship between God and the Israelites becomes officially sanctified.   

However, while it would make sense for us to see the Israelites’ receipt of the Torah as an act of marriage between God and the Jewish people, the question remains as how we are to understand the way in which the relationship between the Jewish people and the God can remain meaningful, even generations upon generations after the moment in which the Torah was received.   For this answer, we can turn to the early modern sage Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon, otherwise known as the “Vilna Gaon,” who writes that the Torah is meant to be the eternal sign of God’s love of the Jewish people, even when God appears absent.  The Vilna Gaon writes:

‘What is the concept of the covenant [brit]?  It is similar to one who loves another but is unable to embrace him.  Because of this situation, the [lover] gives the beloved something that expresses his feelings for his beloved.  The gift keeps them connected and bound together.  And even though he is not present, all of his thoughts are placed in this object.   This is what is meant by the term “brit,” for it is a promise based on this object that he will not “leave” his beloved” (Elijah ben Solomon, Sefer Yetzirah, Chapter 1, Section 8).

In the Vilna Gaon’s commentary, while the giving of the Torah marked the moment God and the Jewish people became united for eternity, the Torah itself represents a piece of God that the Israelites can keep with them in order to remember that, no matter how distant God may appear, there is always a piece of God that is close to their hearts.  By extension, the Vilna Gaon also wants us to understand that because the Torah is a piece of God given to us, Torah study becomes the way in which we can constantly cultivate an intimate relationship with the divine.   Professor Eliyahu Stern explains the Gaon’s perspective on this matter in the following way:

“[the Vilna Gaon] was not simply arguing for the centrality of Torah study in the context of the broader Jewish community in which some devote themselves to study while the overwhelming majority labor as tradesmen and merchants.   Instead, Elijah [the Vilna Gaon] proposed that Torah study offered the sole means through which one could cultivate a spiritual relationship with the Divine” (Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, 93).

Stern’s analysis brings to light the Vilna Gaon’s intent to remind us that Torah study is the only means that one regularly encounters God, as Torah study is the sole means by which a person can link themselves to the moment of consummation between God and the Jewish people that we read about in Parshat Yitro.   Whether or not we agree with the Vilna Gaon’s perspective, the Gaon’s commentary does remind us that Torah study is a singularly unique aspect of Jewish practice, as learning a text linked to one of the Torah’s central moments places us back at the center of God’s ongoing revelation.   

This Saturday night, the Schechter School of Long Island will be hosting a night of Jewish learning centered around the Conservative Movement’s publication of The Observant Life, a monumental work of scholarship focusing on Jewish life and living in the twenty-first century.   Over twenty authors and rabbis from across the denominational spectrum will come to Schechter to teach about the ways in which Jewish living inspires and challenges us in every generation, providing an everlasting link to the revelatory union that took place in this week’s parasha.  Today, when we study Torah, we are taking hold of that gift God gave us at Har Sinai, one that reminds each of us the way in which God remains present in our hearts, our souls, and minds.   May each of us be worthy of making Torah a part of us, allowing us to cultivate a relationship to God that is powerful, meaningful and passionate.   

Shabbat Shalom!