The Year of the Hallelujah RH1: 5771

Sometimes I find myself flipping through the channels at night, and I will stumble upon a Christian television preacher. Now maybe it is out of a sense of curiosity for the other, or perhaps it is due to a feeling of shared purpose, or maybe it is just an attempt to pick up some tips of the trade, but often I will tune in for a while. No matter how often I watch, I am always surprised by a few things which impress me. First off, I notice the sets. Elaborately constructed sets, with a giant rotating globe in the background, a handsome lectern adorned with the brand of a particular preacher of the logo of a particular church, a robed choir perched on risers, waiting to raise their voices in praise. But more than anything, I notice the crowd. The awesome crowd of tens of thousands who come to hear the power of Scripture, whose hearts are open to the possibility of being moved, who have no qualms about shouting the famous refrain: Hallelujah!

Now don’t get me wrong. For the most part, I’m not jealous. I don’t crave an elaborate set to frame the experience of our prayer; and I learned long ago that it is not the lectern that matters, but rather the words which emanate from the lecturer. And as I look out this morning on this soaring crowd of nearly a thousand, I do not envy those who must try to connect personally with their congregants across miles of rows, or through the stale space of the television broadcast.

But since the Jewish New Year is the time for honesty, allow me to share with you what does make me envious of these Christian preachers. I am jealous of that singular word, so often ringing from the lips of their congregants, that word which for millennia has given voice to the indescribable song of the soul: Hallelujah.

I know, some of you might cringe when you hear this word…and I understand why. Too often the word is seen as a cliché call and response to a preacher’s rhythmic rant. For many of us, this word Hallelujah feels a bit like the calling card of the hyper-faithful; those who attend tent revivals and are prone to speaking in tongues. In other words, this Hallelujah doesn’t feel rational, it doesn’t feel authentic, and it certainly doesn’t feel Jewish.

But the truth is, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. I must admit that I have a bit of fun when I ask our children here at Emanu-El, what is the Hebrew word for Hallelujah? And I watch as their brains begin to work overtime. It doesn’t even occur to them, and perhaps not to many of us that this word Hallelujah, the word which has become so ubiquitous among our Christian friends, is truly a Hebrew word, and what’s more, it is an authentically Jewish concept.
Yes, that’s right, the word Hallelujah is ours, and it always has been.
And today, on this New Year’s Day, it is time for us to take it back!

First let us begin with some important facts. The word Hallelujah is a hybrid, containing the Hebrew root, Hey Lamed Lamed, Halal, meaning to praise with the word Yah, the yud and the hey borrowed from the Divine name of Yud Hey Vav Hey, which we now pronounce as Adonai. Put together, Hallelujah simply means: Praise God! In fact, the Hebrew word Hallelujah appears 24 times in the Book of Psalms, especially in a series of Psalms we use as part of our davening each morning.

These poems, Psalms 146-150, are the final five poems found in the Book of Psalms, and they each begin and end with the word Hallelujah. And if you come to our morning minyan some time, you will discover one of the greatest sounds in the world: the sonorous tones of one Louie Yosinoff, age 92, as he articulates for the entire chapel to hear: Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.

So just what are we trying to express when we invoke the power of the Hallelujah? Let’s take a look at one of those Psalms we read each morning to lend us its guidance. Do me a favor, please turn to page 62 in your Mahzorim. Here at the bottom we find Psalm 148, a poem which creates for us a litany of praise. First we begin by exalting the architect of our universe, the heavenly Creator who designed the sun and the moon, commanded the stars to shine in the night sky. Next, however, the Psalmist changes direction, heaping praise unto God for the wonderful diversity of experience which exists in our word. Fire and hail, snow and smoke, mountains and hills, wild and tame beasts, creeping creatures and winged birds, men and women, young and old, Let all praise the glory of Adonai: Hallelujah!

So the first thing we are trying to achieve through the power of the Hallelujah, is a sense of holiness and a sense of wholeness, a recognition of the Godliness that can be found in our world, when we only take the time to notice it. Think to those moments in life when you have been overwhelmed with a sense of the world’s perfection: on that cruise to Alaska with your loved one, hiking through the forests of Yellowstone with your wide-eyed child, counting the countless stars in the sky as you sat alone near a Bedouin tent in the Negev, sitting beneath a wide-branched willow with a father who has long since passed away, or looking out on the blue waters of Block Island Sound from atop your bicycle as your daughter’s sleeping head bobs on your back. Have you ever had moments like these? If you have, then right now I encourage you to close your eyes, take yourself back there for just a moment and allow yourselves to speak the holy word: Hallelujah.

And now, like Psalm 148, let us pause to take notice of the profound diversity which lends life its balance. Because life is not simply about living in neutral, but rather it is about experiencing the poles, recognizing that our world is made whole by appreciating the opposites. What can we say to God for the comfort of the warm sun on our faces in July; as well as the soft licking of a New England snowflake in December? What should be our response to the spider’s web and the eagle’s soaring? How do we give thanks for the calm of the seas or the raging of the thunderstorm? How can we ever annunciate our praise for the difference of the sexes, for the nervous excitement of the first date and for the comfortable ease of finishing each other’s sentences? How should we give thanks for the vigor of youth and the wisdom of old age? For the potential of new life, and the comfort that comes with a life well-lived? There is only one word which dares cross our lips as an answer to the perfection of God’s dichotomous designs: say it with me now: Hallelujah.

Now if you would be so kind as to do me another favor, please turn to page 63 in your mahzorim as we read responsively in the English of Psalm 150, the final poem in the Book of Psalms:

Halleluyah! Praise God in the sanctuary, praise God in the powerful heavens.
Praise God for the mighty deeds, praise God for infinite greatness.
Praise God with the shofar call, praise God with harp and lyre.
Praise God with drum and dance, praise God with flute and strings.
Praise God with crashing cymbals, praise God with resounding cymbals.
Let every breath of life praise ADONAI, Halleluyah!

This famous Psalm is not only recited as part of our daily liturgy, it will also make an appearance during our Rosh HaShanah Musaf, as part of the Shof’rot service.


In his beautiful commentary to the Book of Psalms, entitled Our Haven Our Strength, my colleague Rabbi Martin S. Cohen beautifully explains the theological import of Psalm 150, when he writes:

The great goal of human existence, the poet implies, is to praise God by becoming lost in a web of exultation . . . For most of us, language will fail miserably as a vehicle for conveying the deepest of our spiritual feelings even to ourselves, let alone to God. The poet suggests, therefore, that we abandon the notion that human speech is the sole acceptable vehicle for prater and praise and we should instead seek to communicate our most profound thoughts outside the realm of language: with blasts of the shofar and with the gentle music of the lyre.”

Rabbi Cohen points out an important lesson for us. This Psalm teaches us that the true meaning of the word Hallelujah is that we are placed here on earth with the simple task of giving praise to our Creator, and yet we do not have the verbal tools to succeed in this task. Our words and our actions fall painfully short: Or as the siddur say it best:

Were our mouths to fill with song as the sea,
Our tongues to sing endlessly like waves,
Our lips offer praise like the limitless sky . . .
We would still be unable to express our gratitude to You, Adonai our God and God of our ancestors or to praise Your name for even one of the myriad moments of kindness with which You have blessed us.

What Psalm 150 has to teach us, is that despite the shortcomings of our language, the overwhelming power of the Hallelujah can nonetheless be found in one of our earthly tools; through the unshakable power of music.

Music allows us to transcend our mortal limitations and stretch onward and skyward with our gratitude for the gift of life. Whether it is Mozart’s inspiring horn concertos, a Puccini aria, or the Beatles’ White Album, music reminds us that there is so much more to life than our jobs, our portfolios and our to-do-lists. Listening to a great piece of music shows us that there is majesty in this world, there is meaning, there is reason to live at all. In a word, music is the ultimate: Hallelujah.

For me personally, no popular song demonstrates the spiritual power of music more than Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece entitled: Hallelujah. Now, Leonard Cohen is certainly no Pavorati, and although his version of the song should be valued for its originality and its authenticity, I am nonetheless grateful that other artists have leant their voices to this song, such as Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, KD Lang and Brandi Carlisle. Of course, the younger people in attendance this morning will best recognize the Rufus Wainwright version from the movie Shrek.

But no matter who sings it, the results are viscerally the same.
And the last verse perhaps puts it best:

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah; Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

And although the verses are each inspiring, borrowing from Biblical allusions to King David and Samson, the true power of the song comes in its one word chorus: Hallelujah.

Simply singing this word, combining the emotion of our souls with the power of music magically transports us. Can you feel it? That serendipitous moment when you first met your love? Hallelujah. That time of overwhelming joy as you first held your newborn child? Hallelujah. The peace that comes with the recognition that life is too short to be burdened with worry or complaint? Hallelujah. The stunning realization that we are but a collection of complex carbon, and yet we can see, we can sing, we can think? Hallelujah.

Which brings me to the last line of Psalm 150, the closing line for the entire Book of Psalms and one I want to encourage us to take with us as a mantra for the coming year:

כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַֽלְלוּיָֽהּ:
Let every breath of life praise Adonai, Hallelujah.
In these modern times it is too easy to live our lives in a uninspiring rush. We are numb to moments of meaning. We hurry past our children as they grow old before our eyes. We take for granted the support of a spouse, the devotion of a friend. We rarely take the time to notice the nature which surrounds us, even as it disappears from our lives. We are living in a state of spiritual narcolepsy, choosing to sleep though days, which turn into weeks, which turn into lives.

This year I want us to take seriously the challenge of the Hallelujah. I want us to reclaim this word, break it free from the cliché of the call and response, and incorporate it into our lives as a pathway towards meaning. And let me tell you how.

As I wrote this sermon I received an email from a congregant who was on a vacation visiting the majesty of Arcadia Park in Maine. “I am sorry I won’t be able to attend the meeting on Monday night she said, but please fill me in when I get back.” I replied to her email using five simple words: Say a Hallelujah for me.

So this year I am challenging you to make a change, one that will help to bring purpose, praise and peace into your lives: I implore you to practice saying Hallelujah.

When you see beauty in the natural world, with the changing of the leaves, the first snow of winter or the courage of the crocus: say it: Hallelujah.

When you take pride in your children, watching their first steps, celebrating their ascension into maturity, or rejoicing at their becoming parents themselves: say it: Hallelujah.

When you feel loved in your life, the warm grip of your partner, the supportive hug of your friends, the embrace of your community: say it: Hallelujah.

And finally, when you notice God’s fingerprints in this world of ours, the sun on your face and the stars in the sky, when you slow down to notice the rhythm of your beating heart, the strength of your muscles, the song of your soul; and when you pause to reflect upon the countless sea of breaths in our lives: then take the time to stop, dedicating that one breath to the singular purpose of praise and say:
כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַֽלְלוּיָֽהּ:
Let every breath of life praise Adonai, Hallelujah.
Let every breath of life praise Adonai, Hallelujah.

Humilty is Hard: Parshat B'ha'alot'cha 5770

Let’s start with a riddle:

Everybody thinks that they have me, but very few really do.
In fact, if anyone ever tells you that they have me…doubt them immediately.
But if you do have me, you have peace.
For without me there is only sin.
What am I?

Simple. I am humility.

Everyone thinks they have humility, but very few really do.
In fact, if anyone ever tells you that they have great humility, doubt them immediately.
If you do have humility, they you will have peace.
Without a sense of humility there can be only sin.

It is true, humility is a fickle friend. We all know that it is the only true path towards a pious, righteous life. We also all know how to get it: eschew accolades, avoid the egotistical impulse, and constantly remember that we are but dust and ashes. But the moment we obtain it, the very instant our humility is achieved, we smile a proud smile and it instantly vanishes from within our grasp.
The most amazing thing about humility is that no matter who you are, no matter what you do in life, no matter how much or how little you have, we all seem to suffer the same fate: we are needlessly prideful.

There is a famous Hasidic teaching which illustrates this unfortunate truth:
“Rabbi R’phael of Bashard said: When I get to the World to Come, I will have a valid excuse for every sin I have committed in this world, save one:
Let me explain, when the Heavenly Beit Din asks me: Why did you not busy yourself with the Holy Torah? I will answer: I did not know the Torah, I was a Bor, a empty pit, an Am HaAretz, an imbecile. I simply did not have the intellect to be a student of Torah!
And when they ask me: then why did you not serve God through prayer and Ma’asim Tovim, good deeds?
To this I will answer: I just didn’t have the free time. I was so busy finding food for my family, I just never got around to praying or doing acts of loving kindness.
And when they ask me: Then why did you not afflict yourself, taking on personal fasts of penitence?
I will answer them: Because I was a sickly person and I was afraid fasting would endanger my life.
And when they continue and ask me: So why did you not give Tzedakah?
I will tell them: I did not have any money to give! I was a poor, impoverished person.
But, when they ask me: You, who are an imbecile, a beggar, a weak and sickly man, why then did you commit the sin of being prideful? What is the source of this pride?
For this I will have no reply, for this I will have no answer at all.”

The story is humorous but illustrative as well. It employs the famous Kal v’Homer argument: if an imbecilic, weak-minded, sickly pauper can’t stop themselves from committing the sin of being overly prideful; then how much the more so, someone who is intelligent, learned, sprite and wealthy!

And yet, there is one man in our tradition, and only one man, who merited the oxymoronic title: “the most humble man on earth” and that was Moshe Rabbeinu, our great teacher Moses.

In this morning’s parsha, in a fascinating passage which could be the source of a thousand sermons, Moses is given his most famous accolade: the most humble man on earth. The context of this title is what is interesting: it comes within a narrative where Miriam and Aaron are gossiping about Moses behind his back. They seem to be upset by his choice of spouse or by the fact that God seems to favor Moses over his prophetic siblings. Right after their complaint, almost as a non-sequitor we are told:
וְהָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה עָנָו מְאֹד מִכֹּל הָֽאָדָם אֲשֶׁר עַל-פְּנֵי הָֽאֲדָמָֽה:
“Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on Earth.”

Rashi explains that Moses’ humility can be described in two ways:
Firstly he was Shafal, lowly; meaning he never ascribed greatness to himself or to his role in leading the people out of Egypt, to Mt. Sinai, through the wilderness and to the edge of the Promised Land. Indeed the midrash teaches us that it is:
“Because of his humility, that Moses was worthy to receive the Torah.” –Tanhumah Bereishit 1.6b

Secondly, Rashi explains, he was a Savlan, he had extreme patience, something that Moses clearly demonstrates each time he has to deal with the endless griping and moaning of the Children of Israel. Yet according to our tradition, even Moses’ wasn’t enough of a Savlan to merit entering the Holy Land. After all, it was in his moments of anger, smashing the tablets during the incident of the Golden Calf, and hitting the rock, instead of asking it gently for water, where he lost his temper, and perhaps he therefore lost his ability to lead the people.
So I ask you, if Moses, our greatest prophet and the most humble man on the face of the earth can’t keep it together, what chance do we have?

The answer is: none. If the most imbecilic person in the world can’t help but be prideful, and if the most humble man in the world can’t help but lose his humility in moments of anger, then no we do not stand a chance.

But perhaps that is the way that God intends it. Perhaps our quest towards living humble lives is not meant to be played out in extremes, but rather in seeking out the gentle balance between humility and pride.

In order to emphasize the need for balance in this regard the Hasidic Master Rebbe Simcha Bunim of Pessischa taught: at all times one should carry two pieces of paper in their pocket: One piece of paper, quoting the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) should read:
בשבילי נברא העולם
The world was created for my sake alone.

The other paper, quoting our forefather Abraham, reading:
וְאָֽנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵֽפֶר
I am but dust and ashes.


This teaching indicates to us that there are times in life when the clarion call for action is sounded. In these moments it is our duty to arise, and pulling out the first piece of paper claim: The world was created for my sake alone! And as Rabbi Nahman of Breslav explained when we realize that the world was created for our sake alone, then we are forced at every single second to take action בְּתִיקוּן העוֹלָם in repairing the world, to seek out that which the world is lacking, and to pray that it will be completed.

But, let us not forget the other piece of paper in our pocket. Like a still, small voice it cries out to us in moments of pride reminding us that we are but dust and ashes. That we are simply a lucky collection of atoms, a modicum of carbon, destined to die like every person, every animal, and every flower has died before us.

Yes, this is the trick to life. Striking a delicate balance between moments when pride is called for, and moments when humility must drive our words and actions. And sadly, too often I think our modern leaders finds themselves painfully out of balance.

Much has been said in the past several years about the tone and tenor of our politics. Sure it has always been a dirty game to play, but there were moments in our past where a healthier balance between pride and humility led us to achieve great things, and build a healthy society in which to raise our children. But alas it seems these days the ratio has been thrown out of whack.

On Thursday I was listening to a report on NPR covering President Obama’s press conference defending his administrations’ handling of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf. One reporter, from a right-wing cable news network which rhymes with POX, asked a question of the president. The content of the question is not important, what I noticed was the tone and the language. Essentially this reporter was asking the President to admit that he was a no-good, lousy, on-the-take bureaucrat and that he should basically resign the presidency immediately or the reporter would claim a citizen’s arrest and do it for him!

I turned off the radio right then and there. Though I was hoping for the following response:

Taking out the first piece of paper with a scowl on his face he would remind the reporter that it is he, and no one else, who bears the title The President of the United States of America, that he was elected by a majority to a four-year term of office and whether you agree or disagree with any of his policies you better be certain to give him the respect that he deserves. בשבילי נברא העולם
The world was created for my sake alone.

But then he would catch himself, as he pulled out the other piece of paper and said: I am only human. I can only do my best, and you know what, often my best is just not good enough. Try as I might to remind myself that I am the most powerful man in the free world, I can’t help but also remember: וְאָֽנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵֽפֶר
I am but dust and ashes.

So I will make a suggestion: Let’s all go home after shabbas tonight, write down these phrases on two pieces of paper and place them in our pockets for perpetuity, then we will each succeed in striking the right balance in our life between pride and humility right?

No. Sadly it’s not that simple. The real trick is in knowing which situation in life calls for which piece of paper.

Shabbat Shalom.

A Supreme Bat Mitzvah: Parshat B'midbar 5770

This Shabbas I want to ask a seemingly simply question: What is the most important quality we should be looking for in a Supreme Court Justice? If you ask the question to a pundit on FOX news the answer will undoubtedly be, we should be looking for someone who is a conservative, a strict constructionist not some liberal, activist judge who will legislate from the bench. Ask Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and she would be quick to point out that conservatives can be activist judges too! Therefore we should be looking for a justice with a penchant for progressivism, an understanding that the constitution is a living, breathing document, one that must constantly change with the times. Ask president Obama, as they did on the campaign trail, and you will get another response: The President said “we need somebody who's got…the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young, teenaged mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges.” So which is it? Strict conservative constructionism, pious progressivism, or an empathetic heart and mind? What quality is most important in choosing our next Supreme Court justice?

Well, I have a different answer. Mine is simple. I believe that the most significant criterion for choosing our next justice is that this justice should be the first Supreme Cour Justice to have had a Bat Mitzvah in an Orthodox synagogue. And yes, I recognize that this criterion excludes the 49% of the population who are male, and the 97.8% of Americans who are not Jewish; but please allow me to explain why I feel it is so important that our next Justice be a Bat Mitzvah.

Some years ago as I sat in Rabbi Joel Roth’s course entitled Senior Codes, we spent countless hours poring over some of the most important Sh’elot u’T’shuvot, Rabbinic Legal Responsa ever written. In each class we read and analyzed a Rabbinic response aimed at determining the course of action which was seen as correct in the eyes of Halacha, Jewish Law, God’s desired path for humankind in this world. As Rabbi Roth adeptly explained, when you look at these T’shuvot carefully, you see how the great rabbinic judges rendered their decisions:

-Firstly, we see that the Torah is paramount to any posek, any judge of Halacha, and it must be considered with supreme respect.
-Secondly, since the Torah is not always clear about a given subject, nor can the Torah conceive of every possible scenario under the Sun, the Oral Torah, the laws of the Mishnah and the Talmud must also be consulted with extreme reverence.
-Finally, we must always look at the power of precedent. Whether it is the concept of Minhag Avoteinu B’Yadeinu, the notion that a tradition which was strictly adhered to by our ancestors becomes like a law for us today (hence this kippah that I am wearing), or simply the decision of any posek of past centuries, these cases of precedent must inform our modern responses to a question of Jewish Law.

And from all of this Rabbi Roth explained, two patterns emerge which can justify a wholesale change in the chain of Halachic precedent:

1. If the only expressed reason for the promulgation of a norm no longer obtains, the norm may be abrogated or modified. In other words, if the reason we used to do something is truly no longer relevant, then that something can indeed be changed to match current times.

Secondly, a change can be made if it is proven that:
2. The consequences of maintaining the norm are more detrimental than the consequences of modifying the law. This is of course the justification for the famous ‘Driving T’shuvah’ which argued that the consequence of maintaining the norm, namely people sitting in their suburban homes all alone on a Shabbat morning was indeed WORSE, than changing the law and permitting some to drive to synagogue.

So what does all this have to do with a Bat Mitzvah?

This brings me to a little known hamlet, tucked away in a small corner of America known as Manhattan, birthplace of our Solicitor General, and now Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

As the New York Times reported on Thursday, Ms. Kagan and her family were members of the famous modern-Orthodox shul called Lincoln Square Synagogue. She was a star student in her Hebrew school and when she turned 12 she knew that she wanted to mark her coming of age in the eyes of a Jewish people in the same way as her male coreligionists did, with a ceremony known as the Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Her Rabbi at the time was the famous Shlomo Riskin, who remembers her passion at the time with regard to adapting the precedent of tradition to more closely match the tenor of the times. The only problem was, Rabbi Riskin had never even seen a Bat Mitzvah before, what would it look like?

After much deliberation it was determined that Ms. Kagan would become a Bat Mitzvah on Friday night, May 18th 1973, where she would read from the Book of Ruth, (appropriate for the season of Shavuot) and deliver a speech analyzing the meaning of this special megillah.
And so it was.

Yet I am sure you noticed that her Bat Mitzvah was on a Friday night and not on a Shabbat morning as Bar Mitzvahs tend to be; and I am sure you took note of the fact that she was not permitted to read from the Torah, but rather from the Book of Ruth, whose reading is simply a minhag, not a law in the truest sense of the word. But I believe you have to give Rabbi Riskin some credit for trying, even though sometimes trying is not enough: Rabbi Riskin later said of that night “We crafted a lovely service, but I don’t think it satisfied her completely.”

So what is the big Halachic deal with a Bat Mitzvah anyway, surely the Torah makes no mention of the institution of a Bar Mitzvah, let alone a Bat Mitzvah, so why wouldn’t it be allowed in the first place?

Well, once we exhaust the Torah on a given subject we turn to the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud, and indeed there, in a Tannaitic source found in Masechet Megillah 23a it reads:

הכל עולין למנין שבעה, ואפילו קטן ואפילו אשה. אבל אמרו חכמים: אשה לא תקרא בתורה, מפני כבוד צבור.

“All are allowed to be called up to read from the seven aliyot of the Torah readings, even a minor and even a woman. Although, the wise sages said: A woman is not permitted to read from the Torah because of K’vod Tzibbur, the Dignity of the Community.”

Hmmm. Interesting right? There are actually a lot of layers to this brief text.
Firstly, the Reisha, the first part clearly indicates that although you might not think a woman could be called up to read from the Torah, afilu isha, actually, she is!
Though no sooner is this said then a contradictory statement arises limiting the original. No, said the sages, a woman is indeed not allowed to read from the Torah.
Finally, the reason for this prohibition is given as “Mip’neyh K’vod Tzibbur,” for the sake of the dignity of the community.”

So now, I turn to our Supreme Court Nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and ask, Ms. Kagan, how would you decide? And I think, given her own life experience with this matter I can venture a guess as to her reply.

She would say: I would like to apply the first pattern of appropriate Halachic change to this situation and say that when the only expressed reason for the promulgation of a norm no longer obtains, the norm may be abrogated or modified. In this case the sages justified their prohibition invoking Mip’neyh K’vod Tzibbur, for the sake of the dignity of the community; and just as it is up to the Supreme Court to determine that ‘Separate but Equal’ was no longer a morally tenable justification for Southern segregation, so too our definitions of “The Dignity of our Community,” have no doubt changed. In fact, I believe it would impinge upon our Kavod, our honor, were we not to have changed this law.

Which brings us to Ms. Kagan’s second (assumed) answer, which would be to enact the second pattern of change claiming that change is necessary when “the consequences of maintaining the norm are more detrimental than the consequences of modifying the law.”
In other words, maintaining the ancient status quo would in fact be far more detrimental to our modern congregations than allowing for change. Imagine our own community without the women who attend and daven in our daily minyan, without the women who read our Torah and lead our prayers in this sanctuary, without the hundreds of young women who come before us to become Daughters of the Commandments….without this necessary change our community would be poorer indeed.

And so I return to my original claim that more important that strict constructionism, more crucial that a commitment to progressivism, more significant than an ability to empathize is the criterion that our next justice be a Bat Mitzvah. I pray that should she be confirmed, Ms. Kagan would learn from our great and wise tradition and understand that the Constitution is indeed sacred and lacking at the same time; that she would believe that the judges who preceded her and their wise precedent must be respected as well as scrutinized for modern relevance; and that she believe that while change should not be made without justification, when ample justification is found change must be made.

And finally, perhaps the most important reason why our next Supreme Court Justice should be a Bat Mitzvah, is so that an entirely new generation of young Jewish women can look up to her and say, I too can be Jewish and I too can become anything I wish to be.

Shabbat Shalom.

A Case of Cosmic Strangefire: Parshat Sh'mini 5770

How much can you say in just three verses? If I told you to tell me a story of mystery and intrigue, replete with two tragic deaths and a silent parental response, in just three sentences, could you do it? Well that is exactly what this morning’s parasha, Sh’mini does for us.
Verse One:
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי-אַֽהֲרֹן, נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ, וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ, וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם:
“Now Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord strange fire, which God had not commanded them to bring.”

Verse Two:
וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה, וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם, וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה:
“And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Lord.”

And Verse Three:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל-אַֽהֲרֹן, הוּא אֲשֶׁר- דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה ׀ לֵאמֹר, בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד, וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:
“Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
And Aaron was silent.”

That’s it. Three verses. Blink and you might miss it; but the result is plain to see: Nadav and Avihu somehow offended God, and they paid the ultimate price for their transgression. Moses brings an inscrutable explanation of the event to Aaron; and Aaron offers no verbal response.

The Rabbinic authors of the classical midrash as well as the medieval commentators are both puzzled by the terse nature of the text. What was it that offended the Lord so? Why were Nadav and Avihu, two of the kohanim, people who were enjoined with the task of making offerings before the Lord, punished so severely? And finally, why in the face of this tragedy was their father, Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, silent.

Our sages offer several possibilities as to the question of the sin of Aaron’s sons. The most popular response comes from Rabi Eliezer in the Talmud (Masechet Eruvin 63a) who explains, that the true sin of Nadav and Avihu was not in the act of sacrificing itself, it was a crime of assumption. They took it upon themselves to teach a bit of practical halacha, and in front of their teacher Moses no less! They assumed that Eish Zara, an alien-fire that came from outside the Tent of Meeting would be suitable to the Lord; and they were, unfortunately very wrong. The Midrash, I believe is presenting two value statements: 1) Don’t assume. After all, you know what they say about assuming. 2) Don’t interpret your own laws while there is a Judge standing in the room, the result is never pretty.
Ok, so they assumed what they shouldn’t have, and they embarrassed their teacher Moshe; bad moves no doubt, but deserving of a fiery death? I hardly think so.

Apparently, others of the great rabbinic sages, agreed that there must have been a more egregious crime lurking behind these three verses. Rabi Yishmael says in Vayikra Rabbah, that Nadav and Avihu were drunk when they entered the Mishkan! How does he come to this conclusion? Simple. He reads ahead in the text to verse nine when it says:
יַיִן וְשֵׁכָר אַל-תֵּשְׁתְּ ׀ אַתָּה ׀ וּבָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם אֶל-אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְלֹא תָמֻתוּ
“Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die!”
A pretty convincing argument actually: a good rule of thumb in the historical analysis of a society’s laws is that if there is a law against it – it means that people were breaking that law!
So perhaps this is it, Nadav and Avihu were drunk and therefore not fit to offer a serious gift before the Lord; and they died for their transgression. Though it still seems kind of harsh, no?

Moses’ explanation of God’s justification of their deaths is equally vague:
“This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
Barcuh Levine, in his commentary to Leviticus explains that the Hebrew word בִּקְרֹבַי
“Those who are near to me,” is to be understood as an expression of vocation, not as a literal nearness. He points out that in the Book of Esther for example, the word kerovim is used to denote those who were permitted to come before the king, members of his official inner circle. Therefore, Levine understands this justification as saying, those who serve me dutifully will be rewarded in kind, but those who flout my will, shall be punished.

Finally, a few thoughts on the surprising phrase which ends this incredible three-verse story:
וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן “And Aaron was silent.” As we know from our own lives, sometimes silence speaks louder than words. So what is meant by Aaron’s silent reaction to this tragic news? One thought which comes from the Rashbam, is that Aaron was speechless because of the depths of his aveilut, his mourning. Something today we might refer to as shock. There was no verbal response because Aaron was incapable of making a sound due to the unspeakable horror of this tragedy.

Another explanation, the one favored by Rashi, is that Aaron silently and wholeheartedly accepted God’s judgment upon his sons, and thus did not utter a single cry or complaint to the Lord.

Or perhaps Aaron’s response is not one of mourning, nor of superhuman acceptance; but rather one which recognizes the ineffable mystery that is God. Why does God do what God does? Our silence is sometimes the only answer to the unanswerable question of God.

Three verses! This is the Torah at its best. It has the ability to move us, to make us think, to open doors for midrash and commentary in each and every generation. And somehow, it always manages to be timely as well.

I am not sure whether you took notice or not, but during Pesach our world of science embarked upon a fascinating journey towards discovering the seemingly invisible parts of our universe. This journey, the result of 16 years of work and nearly 10 billion dollars, officially began on the Second Night of Passover when the Large Hadron Particle Collider was turned on under the meadows of Switzerland.

“After two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light … raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.”

What might all this proton smashing do? Well, by accelerating these protons to speeds which stretch towards the speed of light and smashing them together scientists are looking to discover the answers to some long held questions.

For instance, one of the things scientists hope to discover is how it is possible that the power of gravity can be so strong in some instances: for example we all know that gravity is so powerful it is what keeps the Earth, and all the other planets endlessly rotating around the sun, instead of flying off to the ends of the universe. On the other hand, if gravity is such an incredibly strong force, how is it possible that your tiny refrigerator magnet has the ability to overcome its cosmic will?
But most importantly, scientists are after discovering the long-sought existence of dark matter, “which, astronomers tell us, produces the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.” As well as the unveiling of the “missing link of physics, the Higgs Boson particle, also called ‘The God Particle” which is believed to be the particle that imbues our world with mass. In other words, the particle that produces that incredibly important phenomenon we call ‘existence.’
Perhaps I can chalk it up to being somewhat of a closeted ‘science geek,’ or perhaps it is my way of making amends for a life spent within the confines of the liberal arts, but I am into this stuff. Not so much for what it can tell me about a world of science that I can barely understand, but more for what it can tell me about God!

My God is the God of the Big Bang, the Ein Sof Creator, without-end, who set this ever-expanding universe into motion so very long ago. So you better believe I am curious to see what happened in the infinitesimal moments after the singularity of the Big Bang.

But you must also believe that I am worried. Not because, as some detractors have claimed, that the Particle Colider might actually create a black hole, which of course would be the end of all life on Earth. No, my worries are of a theological nature.

I wonder if the sin of Nadav and Avihu was that they committed the simple mistake of underestimating the mystery of God. They thought they knew the answers, they moved without sufficient forethought, they assumed they understood what God wanted from them. In other words, they sought to answer the unanswerable, to uncover all mystery and to explain the inexplicable.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an unabashed fan of science, and I hope that this new experiment will yield an even-deeper understanding of God’s and our universe. I hope we name new particles, begin to truly comprehend the myriad of microscopic forces around us, leading us on the path towards knowledge of the universe and our roles in it. But I am also interested in maintaining a modicum of mystery –
I want us as human beings to recognize that there remain worlds of knowledge yet to be discovered, questions that have yet to be asked, mysteries that may never be solved. For if indeed we are living in an age when all questions are to be answered, then I ask you my friends, “whatever will be left for God?”


Dennis Overbye: “European Collider Begins its Subatomic Exploration” New York Times, March 30, 2010
Ibid.
Daniel Harris Ain: “Faith, Technology and the Afterlife: The Death of Death in the 21st Century”. Conservative Judaism

Building a Mishkan: Paradigms for God Relationships from Sefer Shmot: Vayakhel-P’kudei

Ok, let’s play a quick game of word association. I’ll give you a list of words, and you tell me how they are all related. Ready? Let’s begin:

-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.

Maybe one more time, huh?

-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.

Any ideas? That’s right; when you put these words together you get Sefer Sh’mot, the Book of Exodus. Follow me: Sh’mot starts with the despair of slavery, followed by the experience of divine redemption at the hands of miracles such as the Ten Plagues and the Splitting of the Sea. Then we transition into the experience of Revelation, which while spectacular, nonetheless unveils the unfortunate fact that the Israelites (like all of us) are frail, and our frailty leads us to sin; namely Heyt HaEigel, the Sin of the Golden Calf. Finally, as a remedy for this human frailty the Israelites are given a new prescription: namely they are asked to contribute together to the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, which leads to the culminating event in Sefer Sh’mot, Communion with God, which we read aloud from the Torah this morning:
: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.

-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Sefer Sh’mot in a nutshell.

But what I want to talk about this morning is not the structure of the sefer, nor the architecture of the tabernacle; but rather how we can use these different themes found in the Book of Exodus as paradigms for our personal relationship with God. It is my belief that this ancient Book somehow manages to perfectly capture the many nuanced ways we as moderns experience God in our world.

As we will read in the Haggadah in a few weeks: Matchilin b’g’nut u’m’sayimim b’shevech; when we tell our stories we begin with degradation and we conclude with praise. So let us begin at the beginning, the depressing degradation of slavery.

When Sefer Sh’mot begins, the Israelites are embitterly enslaved in Egypt. In fact, it seems as though they have absolutely no conception of the God of their ancestors; the oppressive darkness of slavery has removed all awareness of God from them; that is until, from the depths, they issue a collective cry.

וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי-יִשְרָאֵל מִן-הָעֲבדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל-הָאֱלהִים מִן-הָעֲבדָה:
“The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their crying, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”

This is our first paradigm for our modern relationships with God. It is a natural human impulse to cry out to God from the depths. Psalm 130 begins: מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהוָה: out of the depths I cry out to you Adonai. For many, this is the first impulse towards a relationship with God. It comes from a cry, a confrontation with terror, a brush with tragedy; when all we can do is cry out to God from within the darkness of our degradation.

And sometimes, though certainly not always, we feel like that cry is answered. Sometimes we receive strength from within these moments of crisis, we feel supported, listened to, noticed by our God. For some, there have been moments of miracles which have brought us closer to God; likely not in the sense of the supernatural, but rather in the context of serendipity. What if I hadn’t slept in, what if I had been on that plane? What if I hadn’t had the courage to ask that girl what her name was? For some of us, these moments of modern miracles lead us to the conclusion that indeed God has noticed us; and this feeling is nothing short of what our ancestors experienced: Redemption.

Next comes Revelation, the revealing of God’s will to humanity, which in many ways has been the dominant conversation of the Mitzvah initiative. Chancellor Arnie Eisen argues that the experience of Mt. Sinai exists every day, in the tiny moments of choice; those experiences of obligation in our lives. These are the moments when we choose right from within a sea of wrong, when we choose morality from within the dominance of the immoral. This is Sinai for Chancellor Eisen, and I think many of us can agree. We can sometimes find God from within our choices. When we do the right thing, when we make choices which bring God into the world, or perhaps when we allow ourselves to experience moments of disquieting thought; such as: am I being the person that God wants me to be, am I living up to my obligations to my religious tradition and to humankind? This is revelation.
But, and this is a big but, I think the Book of Exodus teaches us that while we can sometimes find God in the depths of degradation, or in the redemptive power of the miraculous, or in the wisdom of our moral choices, the fact is that sometimes this is still not enough. We human beings crave the material, we long for the tangible, and so an invisible God who only appears in fleeting moments of experience is unfortunately unsatisfying. For as Chancellor Eisen writes in his book Taking Hold of Torah, these moments of connection with God can all too often be “snuffed out by counter-experiences of meaninglessness or by rational analysis that explains them away.” This is our human frailty, our inability to hold on to our God experiences indefinitely.

This is the sin of the Golden Calf, a sin we commit in our modern lives as well. Despite the miracles they witnessed, despite their experience of redemption, despite the intimacy of Revelation, the Children of Israel couldn’t help but sin in the creation of the Golden Calf. They wanted; they needed something tangible, something material, something lasting. And so do we.

And in what is one of the most inspiring examples of God’s ability to adapt to human beings and our spiritual needs, God decides to meet us, and our frailties, halfway. The Israelites are asked to contribute of their talents and of their means towards the construction of the Mishkan, the tabernacle, a tangible and permanent home for communion with God. God says:
וְעָשוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:
“Build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among you.”
In our parasha this morning, God keeps this promise.

I want to argue that this is perhaps the most compelling paradigm of our modern relationships with God that Sefer Sh’mot has to offer us. Here there is a seemingly simple formula that we can employ to feel God’s presence in our lives. The first step requires us to act: we are implored to contribute.
כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ
“Every person whose heart so moves them should contribute,”

In other words, the path towards experiencing God in our lives is not built by scattered experiences of the divine, but rather by action on our part towards contributing to a more Godly world. We are asked to give of our time, our energy, and our talents towards the construction of institutions, buildings and communities which hold God at their center. We moderns are no different than our ancient Israelite ancestors in our human frailties. We too long for God experiences which are based in something tangible, something we can touch and feel, something which will last against the unstoppable tide of cynicism. But unlike the Israelites we must not let our frailties win. We must not build Golden Calves, lest we find ourselves worshiping the false gods of materialism.

No, instead I am arguing that we should follow the path of the Mishkan: That through the power of collective contribution toward the construction of God-centered institutions, synagogues, schools and philanthropies; we have been given the path towards communion with God in the modern world. In our world meaningful experiences of Adonai, lasting communion with God in our lives can best be found from within the power of God-centered communities. In a world where increasingly, we do not even know our neighbors, we must work tirelessly to ensure the incredible opportunity of community.

More powerful that scattered miraculous moments, more lasting than fleeting experiences of revelation, is the enduring power of creating a community which can serve as a home for God in our lives:

: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.
Hazak, Hazak v’Nithazek
Strength, Strength and let us strengthen one another.
Shabbat Shalom.

Coercion vs. Personal Conviction: A Modern Midrash for Parshat Mishpatim 5770

I want to begin with a modern-day Mashal, a parable:

There once was a man named Norman, and he was a traveling salesman. He traveled from town to town, from door to door selling his wares. It was not an easy job, in fact it was downright lonely, not to mention the fact that he was selling the heaviest, most-cumbersome item ever created: A complete, thirty-six volume set of The Encyclopedia Britannica.

One time, he arrived at a small desert town and he set his sights on unloading this heavy burden of his. He figured he would split the town into three parts spread over three days, so he didn’t have to lug his entire heavy inventory around with him. On the first day, He stopped at every house on the street, and yet, at each stop – there was an excuse to refuse his enticing offer!
“Your encyclopedias are so outdated, we’ll just look it up on the internet!” shouted the computer savvy family.
“Why do I need an Encyclopedia for, I’m not into books, I’m into video games.” said the impetuous child.
“Why would I want a thirty-six volume encyclopedia set, you think I have room inside my house for something like that?” asked the angry man.
At each house was a rejection, until at the very last house on his journey a little old woman finally bought one, lonely set of encyclopedias; twelve hours of walking and heavy lifting, and all he had to show for it was one, pitiful sale.

Dejected, Norman returned home to his lonely hotel room that evening and he decided he would wake up and try it all over again, but this time he would take a different tack.

The next day, when the customer opened the door, Norman greeted them with a smile, a shiny copy of the first volume of the encyclopedia and a glimmering, silver gun.
“Hello there,” he said “My name is Norman and I would like to sell you this set of Encyclopedias, are you interested?” Well, the shocked and terrified customer took one look at that gun, and without hesitation they handed him the money, accepted the bulky set of books and as soon as they were able they shut the door and closed the blinds, never to be seen again. Well Norman did this at each and every house he went to, and wouldn’t you know it? He sold every last copy of the encyclopedia he brought with him that day. He returned to his hotel, happy, content and fulfilled.

The next morning he awoke, ready to take on the final set of homes, and of course, he brought his gun along. But this time on the way to the latest set of homes, as he passed by the houses he had visited the day before, he noticed something terrible. Each customer who had accepted the encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before had now placed their brand-new box of books out on the curb, waiting for the garbage truck to come by!

Norman quickly realized what had happened. His new, heavy-handed strategy had been extremely effective when it came to his sales, but it failed miserably when it came to creating appreciation among his customers for all the knowledge and beauty to be found in his wonderful encyclopedias.

He put the gun away, and went back to his old ways; knocking on each door, smiling and asking if they would like to buy a new set of encyclopedias.
He did not sell a single encyclopedia that day, but at least he felt good about himself on the way home. And as he walked back to his hotel one last time, he heard someone shouting behind him. He turned around and recognized that it was a customer who had bought a set of encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before. Norman looked around for the police, but instead this young woman was approaching him with a smile. “I just wanted to thank you,” the young woman said. “At first I only bought the encyclopedias because of the gun, I was afraid you would shoot me if I didn’t buy them, but for the past day I have been reading them cover to cover, and you know what, they are really great!”

Norman smiled at the young woman, and he replied, “You are very welcome.”

And now the Nimshal, the message behind the mashal, the parable I just told you.

This whole concept of Revelation, that is, God’s revealing of the Law at Mt. Sinai for the Jewish people is a complicated one to say the least, and to say the most it is fraught with theological concerns. It is one thing to believe in the Creator of the Universe, but it is another leap of belief entirely to claim that this Creator revealed its Divine Will before the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. What did this revelation look like? What did it feel like for those present? And how and why did the Jewish people choose to accept this revelation as their path?

The story of Norman the encyclopedia salesman is an example of a modern version of some ancient midrashim.

The first midrash explains, that despite our particularistic inclinations, as a people, we were not the only nation God offered the Torah to; in fact we were the last in a long line of refusals. In a medieval collection of Midrashim known as Pesikta Rabati, we have a midrash which tells us that God went to the nations of Edom, Amnon, Moab, and Ishmael, and each of these nations refused God’s Torah on ideological grounds…that is, they knew they could never keep specific moral precepts found in the teachings. In fact, the midrash goes on explaining:
“That there was not a single nation among the nations to whom God did not go, speak and as it were [I promise this is in the text] knock on the door, asking whether it would be willing to accept the Torah.”
[Until] “At long last he God came to Israel, and they said “Na’aseh v’Nishmah!” “We will do what we have heard!” (A phrase we read aloud this morning from Parshat Mishpatim.)
According to this midrash, the people of Israel are the last, lonely woman in the first part of our parable; after a long day of searching, and after a series of heart-breaking rejections, Norman, God, finally sold his first set of encyclopedias.

So what about day two of our Mashal?
Another midrash, this time from the Talmud [B. Shabbat 88a] explains that at the moment of Revelation, the text of the Torah states that the children of Israel were standing “בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָֽר”, which could be literally, though perhaps not correctly, translated as “underneath the mountain.” This, the rabbis explain, means that God uprooted Mt. Sinai from the earth, turned it upside-down like an inverted barrel and said to the Children of Israel “If you accept the Torah, all is good; if not, you are standing on your graves.”
In other words [with gun pointing] “Would you like to buy a set of encyclopedias.”

This opens the door to a serious theological question: If we were to learn that the acceptance of the Torah at Mt. Sinai was due to the impressive impulse of coercion rather than that of personal or national conviction, does it somehow cheapen the act of acceptance? Some of us would no doubt jump in and say “no!” We are coerced into doing a lot of things by our societal structure but this does not preclude the possibility of finding personal meaning within the act itself. For example, if I don’t pay my taxes, or send my kids to school I know that my society will punish me; however I still believe it is patriotic to support my country financially and it is the duty of a responsible parent to ensure the education of their child!

Others of us would certainly disagree. We would say that coercion as a means to an end is at best ineffectual and at worst counter-productive. Remember the mashal? Sure Norman sold a lot of encyclopedias that day, but the next day they were all in the garbage! Perhaps it is a similar with Torah: many Jews of the past generations who had their Judaism force-fed to them, or who experienced negative Jewish experiences are now disillusioned with their faith and estranged from their traditions. On the other hand, many who were allowed to come into their Judaism in their own way, at their own pace and due to their own personal convictions find themselves to be spiritually content, and deeply-connected to their practice of Jewish traditions. We could argue about this all day, and in our Mitzvah Initiative, we have argued about it!

However, one piece of the mashal remains: the image of the young woman, who although she was coerced into buying the encyclopedia at gun point, nonetheless took the time to open the volumes, thumb the pages and find massive meaning in her purchase. Despite Norman’s mistake of means, the end was a successful one. This young woman surprisingly found herself to be thrilled with the set of encyclopedias and she sought out Norman the next day to tell him so.

This too is a midrash from the Talmud. After the rabbis discuss the possibility that Bnei Yisrael’s acceptance of the Torah was a mere result of coercion, they immediately suggest that this coercion was only temporary. In fact, over time the people of Israel grew to learn, and yes, to love the law of the Torah. Despite their original hesitation in the desert, they eventually stood up as a people and proclaimed acceptance of their own free will and from their own sense of personal conviction. According the Rabbis, when did this true moment of national acceptance occur?

In far away Persia, during the reign of one Ahashverosh, when Queen Esther and her guardian Mordechai engineered a moment of national redemption from impending doom.
In that moment the Megillah tells us that the entire nation of Jews stated:
קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ
“They undertook and they obligated themselves,” meaning that the original moment of coercion had finally given way to commandedness through personal conviction. This self-motivated proclamation of Kimu v’Kib’lu, the rabbis explain, immediately replaced the possible coerced statement of Na’ase v’Nishmah from this morning’s parasha.

Or to put it another way, the Jewish people, running after their God, shouted out….
“You know what, thank you for this Torah, thank you for its laws, thank you for its teachings, they are really great!” And God, turning around, smiles and says “You are very welcome.”


Shabbat Shalom.

The Art of Remembering: Parshat Bo 5770

We human beings are a forgetful folk.
No matter how hard we try, we are constantly forgetting things. Often they are relatively small things, an email we needed to respond to, an errand we needed to run or a phone call to a friend we meant to make. But sometimes, they are important things, like your mother’s birthday, or that it was your turn to pick the kids up from school, or even your anniversary. No matter what we try, inevitably we end up forgetting something along the way.

Throughout the years, there have been many different attempts at solving the human predilection for forgetting. For example, there is the common tradition of tying a string around your finger as a reminder of something important; but lately this has become impractical. After all, how many of us always have a little piece of string at the ready to tie around our finger at a moment’s notice? Furthermore, even though a string may serve as a good reminder to do something, what it doesn’t do is remind us what exactly we needed to do. This could lead to a series of strings tied to a series of fingers each reminding us what the previous string was supposed to indicate!

I once heard of another clever approach to prevent this ancient practice of forgetting; this one suggests that whenever we have a moment of remembering and need to ensure that we will not forget, we should place a shoe on the toilet seat. This way, the next morning, when we see this shoe oddly out of place, it will jog our memory and we will no doubt succeed in remembering the task at hand. But this approach is also fatally flawed. First off, there is rarely an easy-to-find shoe in my bathroom, and even if there was, due to my absent-mindedness I could easily imagine a situation when I would spend fifteen minutes the next morning searching for my missing shoe!

Finally, there are now technological innovations which can help us to remember when our human frailties urge us to forget. I am constantly scheduling reminders in my phone, which will then beep or vibrate, revealing a detailed message of the task that is at hand. The trouble is that sometimes the phone is in the other room, and occasionally I will say to myself: “yeah, well that one can wait a bit,” and there is no procrastination feature which automatically sets a new reminder.

Nowadays there are even popular email services which will send you a friendly reminder message in your inbox, telling you that today is mom’s birthday; though it won’t make the phone call for you!

There must be literally thousands of ways we have invented to try and remind ourselves of things, but no matter what we do, sometimes we still end up forgetting. I guess it must be built into our DNA; we human beings have become professional forgetters.

But don’t feel bad! Sometimes it is nice to remind ourselves that we are not alone, people have always been this way. How do we know? Simple, because it is in today’s Torah portion.

In this morning’s Torah portion, Parshat Bo, we learn of the origin of one of the world’s most ancient anti-forgetting device, otherwise known as t’fillin.

As the Children of Israel make their hurried way out of Egypt, they are told in no uncertain terms that when they arrive at their fated destination in the Holy Land, they must do everything in their power to remember that God took them out with a strong arm and an outstretched hand. The Torah informs them, and through them, it informs us, that in each and every generation we are to commemorate the Exodus with a festival for God. And in each and every age we are told that we must teach this to our children, and say to them “It is because of what the Lord did for me, when I came out of Egypt!”

But then, in what seems to be somewhat of a non-sequitur we are told:
וְהָיָה לְךָ לְאוֹת עַל-יָֽדְךָ וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ לְמַעַן תִּֽהְיֶה תּוֹרַת יְהוָֹה בְּפִיךָ כִּי בְּיָד חֲזָקָה הוֹצִֽאֲךָ יְהוָֹה מִמִּצְרָֽיִם:

“And it shall be for you as a sign upon your hand, and as a reminder between your eyes, in order that the teachings of the LORD shall always be in your mouth, for it was with a strong hand that the LORD took you out of Egypt.”

What is clear from this verse is the sense that the experience of leaving Egypt is so paramount to our people that we must do everything in out power to ensure that we do not forget; that despite our distance in both time and space from this event, we nonetheless must try to see ourselves as though we were the ones who left Egypt. But what is unclear is whether or not the Torah is being literal or metaphorical. Are we literally supposed to wear a sign upon our arms and between our eyes at all times in order that we not forget, or perhaps, the Torah using a linguistic tool which really means: keep this story close to you, wear it on your hearts, and keep its message before your eyes always.


It should not surprise us to learn that the rabbis and the commentators spent a lot of their time discussing this very issue! The famous medieval commentator Rashi explains that this verse is specifically telling us to write down these verses on tiny pieces of parchment in order that we should bind them to our head and upon our arm. For Rashi, this is the source of the rabbinic ritual of t’fillin, two boxes, one to be worn on the head, one to be worn on the arm, each containing a series of parshiyot, sections, from our Torah which refer to this concept of literally wearing a reminder of God’s majesty upon our bodies.

However, the Rashbam, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, Rashi’s grandson clearly disagrees with the interpretation of his grandfather on the true intent of this verse. (Clearly, even Rashi is not immune to the complications of family conflict.) For the Rashbam, the p’shat, or the plain meaning of the text is clear! He writes:
‘According to the true intent of the verse, it teaches us that we should constantly try to remember the Exodus, k’ilu, as though it were always written upon our hand. And when it says, we should wear it between our eyes, what it really means is that God’s special relationship with us should be like a piece of jewelry we wear on our foreheads, making us beautiful.’
So which is it? Is the verse trying to tell us that we should literally wear these verses on our person at all times, or is it meant as a spiritual metaphor encouraging us to never forget what God did for our people in Egypt?

Well, in what no doubt is a strange coincidence of history, generations before our medieval commentators, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud clearly decided to go the route of the string tied around the finger. In so doing, they created t’fillin: the ritual of encapsulating small pieces of parchment into two leather boxes and then wearing these boxes between our eyes, and upon our arm, closest to our hearts.

For us as modern Jews however, this ancient ritual of t’fillin can sometimes be difficult for us to connect with. For some it is a clear example of the comically-literal nature of the rabbis, and therefore something that no longer holds meaning in our more refined world. For others it is just plain strange; a ritual which awakens in us that most uncomfortable feeling of ‘otherness’, making us feel strangely foreign in our beloved, melting-pot society.

In fact a timely example of this sense of ‘otherness’ that t’fillin can cause in our modern world came across the newswire on Thursday, when it was reported that a plane on its way from New York to Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia due to a terrorist scare. What was the suspicious incident which caused this diversion: A seventeen year old boy was putting on his t’fillin to pray the morning prayers. No wonder some of us may be hesitant to lay t’fillin, it is seen by others as so foreign and so unusual to warrant suspicion, or worse, even arrest!

But for others, myself included, there are incredible spiritual benefits for fulfilling this ancient mitzvah. There is a special moment for me each morning when I say the Sh’ma while wearing my t’fillin. It is a moment of consciousness. It is the sense of being in the moment; the feeling of perfect precision, when we find ourselves engaged in the very ritual our liturgy is describing. For others of us the meaning of the mitzvah of T’fillin comes from the sense of enwrapping ourselves in the text, in our community, in God’s sheltering presence. For many of us, we can’t help but pause and feel that stunning sense of nostalgia each time we wear the very same pair of t’fillin that our fathers and our grandfather’s wore…(and in another generation of time) that our mother’s wore.

And so finally, I want to conclude by returning to the perpetual problem of forgetting. It’s true; we human beings are a forgetful folk. Despite our best intentions we try and we fail to remember things; big and small. But one of the functions of religion in general, and of the Jewish commandments in particular is to be a string tied around the finger of our spiritual selves. T’fillin are meant to be a daily email sent to your inbox reminding you to remember to live a holy life, to try and emulate God’s ways, to not forget what is truly important. Although they may seem a bit strange, and these days could even be the cause of an emergency landing, they are meant to wake us up from our spiritual slumber, to enlighten us to the possibility of living a life with purpose. In a world filled with professional forgetters, wouldn’t you want to be counted among those who practice the ancient art of remembering?

Shabbat Shalom.